00074918.2014.980373

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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies

ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20

In This Issue: Notes from the Editor

Pierre van der Eng

To cite this article: Pierre van der Eng (2014) In This Issue: Notes from the Editor, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 50:3, 313-314, DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2014.980373

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.980373

Published online: 03 Dec 2014.

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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Vol. 50, No. 3, 2014: 313–14

IN THIS ISSUE

Notes from the Editor

This issue of BIES relects on the retirement from university employment of one of

its former editors, Hal Hill. Hal has been associated with the Indonesia Project at

ANU since 1983, and was editor of the journal during 1990–98 and briely in 2012. As a proliic author, he was sought after as a supervisor by Indonesian PhD stu

-dents. Several of them contribute to this issue as their salute to him—including M. Chatib Basri, who offers an homage to Hal, sharing his relections on Hal’s career

and on their long friendship.

Haryo Aswicahyono, another of Hal’s former PhD students, collaborated with Hal for this issue’s ‘Survey of Recent Developments’. In essence, their survey dis

-cusses several economic challenges that Indonesia’s new president, Joko Widodo (Jokowi), and his cabinet face as the country’s economic growth continues to slow. The survey notes that Indonesia’s economic growth is actually respectable in an international context, but the authors point to some possible headwinds, such as the risk of global economic volatility, declining commodity prices, and micro economic ‘policy drift’. In the light of tight iscal and monetary policies, only eco

-nomic reforms appear likely to turn this situation around. The authors compare this required policy resolve to the stance Indonesia’s government took to resolve a similar situation in the early 1980s.

Each December issue offers an update of political developments in Indonesia that codetermine the country’s business environment. Edward Aspinall and Mar-cus Mietzner focus on Indonesia’s presidential elections in July, arguing that they were a ‘close call’ for Indonesia’s democracy. A late rally in the polls by former general Prabowo Subianto, who had slated Indonesia’s democratic system and pro

-posed to take the country in a more authoritarian direction, narrowed the gap in the popular vote to 6.3%. A key difference between the candidates was the superior organisational and inancial support of Prabowo’s campaign. The authors conclude that Indonesia’s democratic future remains uncertain because Prabowo and his supporters control a majority of parliamentary seats.

Two more of Hal’s former PhD students demonstrate their craft here. Dionisius Narjoko buys into the public discussion in Indonesia about whether its manufac

-turing sector is losing its competitiveness and whether the country is heading for deindustrialisation. He analyses the differences in the characteristics of the popula

-tions of irms that started in the manufacturing industry during 1991–96 and dur

-ing 2000–2009. Among Narjoko’s ind-ings are that the later entrants were larger or less dependent on credit than the earlier entrants, and therefore more resilient to economic shocks. They were also less dependent on exports, indicating resilience to international shocks. Such characteristics substantiate the conclusion that the recent generation of irms is more robust, pouring cold water on nascent pessimism about Indonesia’s manufacturing industry.

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314 In This Issue: Notes from the Editor

Like Narjoko, Yogi Vidyattama addresses a very current issue: the potential consequences of Indonesia’s introducing universal health coverage in 2014. With coauthors Riyana Miranti and Budy P. Resosudarmo, Vidyattama uses combined data from the 2007 Susenas and Riskesdas surveys to examine how and to what extent the 2014 health care insurance package will increase demand for medical services. Although the results are indicative rather than conclusive, they do indi

-cate an increase of eight percentage points in the number of people who feel ill and seek medical attention (and an increase of ive percentage points among the general population). Such an increase in demand adds to the strain on Indonesia’s health care system.

Blane D. Lewis discusses another current issue, assessing the impact of two outputbased regional performance grants that Indonesia’s government trialled during 2010–12. The experiences of these trials may inform a new inter governmental iscal legislative and regulatory framework that is currently under discussion in the Ministry of Finance. Lewis assesses the impact of both grant programs and inds positive outcomes against the stated objectives. Although the impact was not to the degree expected in the designs of both programs, it appears suficient to offer an alternative to the equitybased approaches that have led to weak local public service outcomes.

Paul Castañeda Dower and Elizabeth Potamites address an aspect of yet another current issue in Indonesia: land titles. It is well known that the country’s system of rural land titles is less than perfect. Several initiatives have sought to improve this situation, and one of the arguments used is that land titles are likely to allow rural, poor smallholders to capitalise on their main asset by offering title deeds as col

-lateral for bank loans. Castañeda Dower and Potamites use household survey data in demonstrating that formal land titles indeed have a positive effect on access to credit, but that this outcome is largely due to the signalling effect of title deeds to creditors in the context of limited information about creditworthiness, rather than

to the use of land titles as collateral.

In the inal article in this issue, Riyana Miranti, Alan Duncan, and Rebecca Cas-sells continue this journal’s sustained interest in aspects of poverty and inequality in Indonesia, by contrasting the growth elasticity and inequality elasticity of pov

-erty during 2002–10 and 1990–97, on the basis of provincial data. They conclude that the effectiveness of economic growth in alleviating poverty across provinces was greater during 2002–10 than in earlier years. On the other hand, rising income inequality restricted the reduction in the poverty rate by onequarter to onethird. The authors conclude that Indonesia’s famed record of ‘propoor’ growth has

started to tarnish.

Our abstracts of doctoral theses on the Indonesian economy summarise stud

-ies of the political economy of postconlict violence, the determinants of women’s exiting from and returning to employment, and Islamic microinance providers and their contribution to socioeconomic development. Our book reviews respond to

publications on colonialera exploitation and production; the historical commercial relationship between the Dutch and Chinese in Java; political behaviour and public attitudes in four Asian states; the environmental performance of Indonesia’s indus

-trial corporations and the competitiveness of its local governments; Islamic bank

-ing; the legal anthropology of West Sumatra; and Indonesia’s position in regional economic corridors, in ASEAN, and in its engagement with China. Selamat membaca!

Pierre van der Eng