Cielito Flores Habito or "Ciel" Habito is a Filipino

Filipino people

The Filipino people or Filipinos are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the islands of the Philippines. There are about 92 million Filipinos in the Philippines, and about 11 million living outside the Philippines ....

 economist, professor, and columnist. He served concurrently as the Director-General of the National Economic and Development Authority and Socio-Economic Planning Secretary during the Ramos administration.

He is one of the 1991 Ten Outstanding Young Men Awardees for Economics.

Early life and Education

Habito was born on April 20, 1953 in Cabuyao, Laguna. He studied at the Maquiling School in Los Baños for grade school, then at the Philippine Science High School for secondary education. He attended the University of the Philippines Los Baños for his tertiary education, earning a degree in Agriculture, major in Agricultural Economics

Agricultural economics

Agricultural economics originally applied the principles of economics to the production of crops and livestock — a discipline known as agronomics. Agronomics was a branch of economics that specifically dealt with land usage. It focused on maximizing the crop yield while maintaining a good soil...

 and graduating Summa Cum Laude.

He then attended the University of New England

University of New England (Australia)

The University of New England is an Australian public university with approximately 18,000 higher education students. Its original and main campus is located in the city of Armidale in northern New South Wales....

 in Armidale, New South Wales, Australia, where he earned a Master of Economics degree. He also obtained a Master of Arts

Master of Arts (postgraduate)

A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

 in Economics and a Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 in Economics at the Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Academic Career

Habito currently teaches Economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

 at the Ateneo de Manila University

Ateneo de Manila University

The Ateneo de Manila University is a private teaching and research university run by the Society of Jesus in the Philippines. It began in 1859 when the City of Manila handed control of the Escuela Municipal de Manila in Intramuros, Manila, to the Jesuits...

. He is also director of the Ateneo Center for Economic Research and Development, a research unit in economics and economic policy at the same university.

Columnist

He writes a weekly column entitled No Free Lunch in the Philippine Daily Inquirer

Philippine Daily Inquirer

The Philippine Daily Inquirer, popularly known as the Inquirer, is the most widely read broadsheet newspaper in the Philippines, with a daily circulation of 260,000 copies. It is one of the Philippines' newspapers of record...

's opinion section. From August 2003 to June 2010, he wrote for the same newspaper's business section. He was also a columnist in The Manila Times from May 2002 to July 2003.

External Links

• No Free Lunch, Philippine Daily Inquirer Latest Columns of Dr. Habito
• Department of Economics, Ateneo de Manila University (last updated in 2008)