Arsenio Balisacan is an economist with extensive high-level policymaking practice and a well-recognized expert in Asia on economic development, inequality and poverty, antitrust (competition policy), and political economy of policy reforms.

On secondment from the University of the Philippines (UP) where he is a Professor of Economics, Balisacan is serving as the first Chairperson of the Philippine Competition Commission. Prior to this appointment, he was Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and concurrent Director-General of the National Economic and Development Authority from 2012 to 2016.
 
Previous to his Cabinet appointment, he was Dean of the UP School of Economics, Director-Chief Executive of the Southeast Asian Regional Centre for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture, and Undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture. Before joining the UP faculty in 1987, he was Research Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu and Economist at the World Bank in Washington, D.C.

He is a lifetime Member-Academician of the National Academy of Science and Technology, the country’s peer-elected group of select individuals who have made outstanding contributions to science and technology.

Balisacan holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Hawaii and an MS degree in Agricultural Economics from UP Los Baños.