Sylwyn Calizo Jr.

Sylwyn Calizo Jr. is a researcher in the international goods trade, the digital economy, and regional economic integration.

Together with Policy Support Unit colleagues, Mr. Calizo supports APEC discussions through the preparation of policy reports and policy briefs on a broad range of topics, including tariff liberalization in RCEP and the use of digitalization to encourage business formalization in the region. He is also the Team Leader responsible for the biannual updating of StatsAPEC — the only consolidated source of APEC-specific data.

Before joining APEC, Mr. Calizo was a Research Specialist at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), the Philippine government’s primary socioeconomic policy think tank, where he worked on several policy-oriented research investigating the Philippines’ trade policy concerns, such as the incidence of non-tariff measures, the determinants of e-commerce adoption, and the impact of foreign linkages on innovation activity. While at PIDS, Mr. Calizo also worked together with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS) International, and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to prepare the Philippines’ assessments for international studies exploring the digital economy.

He was also involved in international projects about the digital economy, which discussed the digital divide in Asia and digital trade integration in the Asia-Pacific. Mr. Calizo holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the University of Santo Tomas, Philippines.