00074918.2014.980372

(1)

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cbie20

Download by: [Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji] Date: 17 January 2016, At: 23:32

Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies

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

Homage to Hal Hill

M. Chatib Basri

To cite this article: M. Chatib Basri (2014) Homage to Hal Hill, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 50:3, 315-318, DOI: 10.1080/00074918.2014.980372

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074918.2014.980372

Published online: 03 Dec 2014.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 418

View related articles

(2)

Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Vol. 50, No. 3, 2014: 315–18

HOMAGE TO HAL HILL

M. Chatib Basri

University of Indonesia

Few people have contributed more to the study of the Indonesian economy than Professor Hal Hill. Since graduating with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in eco

-nomics from Monash University, in Melbourne, in the early 1970s, Hal has placed Indonesia at the centre of his academic work and policy interests. In 1976, he took up a PhD scholarship at The Australian National University, having been capti

-vated by the energy and vision of Professor Heinz Arndt—one of Australia’s most distinguished economists and the then head of the ANU Indonesia Project—who would become his dissertation supervisor and a close friend.

Hal is of the generation of economics scholars who collected data for their dis

-sertations directly from irms and policymakers during extended periods of ield

-work in Indonesia. This experience armed him with good language skills and a deep understanding of the society and the economy. Hal’s dissertation assessed the choice of techniques in the weaving industry in Indonesia; it led him to many centres of the industry in Java, including rural environments such as Majalaya, in West Java, and Pedan, in Central Java. The dynamics of manufacturing devel

-opment in Indonesia and Southeast Asia subsequently became one of his main areas of academic interest. In turn Hal has always encouraged his PhD students to immerse themselves in ieldwork to support their analyses of secondary data collected by national agencies.

I irst met Hal in 1995, at ANU, while I was a master’s student and Hal was teaching a popular course on Southeast Asian economics. Hal is one of those scien

-tists who are able to observe an argument from several sides; hence the conclusions of his analysis are typically clear, objective, and acceptable to many parties. During 1997–2001 he supervised my own PhD at ANU, on the political economy of trade protection in Indonesia. I remember Hal being an enthusiastic, meticulous, and diligent supervisor, generous in his comments and criticisms. He spent uncount

-able hours reading my chapters, often asking me to qualify my arguments or to juxtapose them with counterarguments—this helped to ensure that I remained objective throughout. Hal’s encouragement and advice continued to help me when I was writing for academic journals, and it helps me in my career now.

I have beneited greatly from my interactions with Hal, both in my job and in my daily life. I have learnt much, for example, about Australian wine. Hal tried his hand at winemaking before entering academia, and he still knows a lot about the industry. During my student years, almost every Friday when we were both on campus, we would sit in his ofice and taste different wines from his collection while discussing the Indonesian economy. Even now, each time he comes to Indonesia he sends me an email—‘Hello, apa kabar, bung? Apakah ada waktu

(3)

(4)

Homage to Hal Hill 317

sedikit? Maaf mengganggu, bung’—an unrejectable invitation to drink wine with him while we discuss economic developments in Indonesia and elsewhere. Such meetings always broaden my knowledge. This is typical of Hal; he builds close working relationships with many of his former students. He has collaborated with several former students in research projects, well after they have completed their degrees. Since 2000, Hal has been the main supervisor of more than a dozen PhD students—many of whom were Indonesian.

Yet Hal’s irst appointment after completing his PhD was not related to Indo

-nesia. Rather it was to the Faculty of Economics at the University of the Philip

-pines (1980–83), the then premier economics faculty in Southeast Asia. This was a blessing in disguise for his later work on Indonesia. Not only did Hal became well schooled in economic issues in the Philippines, but mixing with top interna

-tional economists in Manila broadened his approach to subsequent research on the Indonesian economy. It meant that his work was more appreciated by Indone

-sians who were looking to foreign scholars for broader, comparative understand

-ings of their national economic issues.

In 1983, Hal Hill returned to Australia and, after a short period as a civil servant in Canberra (long enough to convince him that a career path in the bureaucracy was not for him), he took a position at ANU in the Department of Economics in the Research School of Paciic and Asian Studies (now the Arndt–Corden Depart

-ment of Economics in the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Paciic). For several years he worked with Heinz Arndt and Ross Garnaut on the ASEAN–Australia Joint Research Project, which he headed for a period. Dur

-ing this time, Hal forged close personal and professional ties with many of the top economists in Southeast Asia.

In 1986, Hal was appointed as the head of the Indonesia Project and then, in

1990, as the editor of BIES. Heinz Arndt had retired as head of the Project in 1982

and, at the time of Hal’s appointment, the Project had lost two key staff members, Peter McCawley and Anne Booth. Hal set out injecting new blood into the group through the appointment of Ross McLeod and Chris Manning in the department

and to the Project. In 1998, Hal stood down as the head of the Project and the editor of BIES to take up a chair as the Professor of Southeast Asian Economics at ANU.

Indonesia has been the focus of Hal Hill’s academic work and policy interests. Indonesia was central in his early comparative publication on industrialisation

in Southeast Asia (Export-Oriented Industrialization: The ASEAN Experience, with

Mohamed Ariff, in 1985). In 1989 and 1996, he produced two classics, the edited volume Unity and Diversity: Regional Economic Development in Indonesia, and The Indonesian Economy since 1996: Asia’s Emerging Giant, both of which remained

standard references for well over a decade. His book on the regional economy is an economic analysis of developments in all of Indonesia’s 26 regions (at the time), written by some 50 international and Indonesian authors. The book on the Indonesian economy surveys macro and microeconomic performance and poli

-cies across all sectors and major areas of economic policy.

Subsequent books by Hal on Indonesia include three edited volumes based on major conferences on Indonesia held at ANU: a review of the Soeharto era,

Indonesia’s New Order: The Dynamics of Socio-economic Transformation (1994); Indo-nesia’s Technological Challenge (1998), with Thee Kian Wie; and Regional Dynamics in a Decentralized Indonesia (2014). In addition, Hal has written a wealth of articles

(5)

318 M. Chatib Basri

(around 50 on Indonesia alone) in development and regional journals—as well as book chapters on a wide range of topics—with a special focus on manufactur

-ing development, foreign investment, and trade. Hal is also a proliic reviewer of books on East Asia and Indonesia, an occasional contributor of opinion pieces to Australia’s and Indonesia’s main newspapers, and a thoughtful composer of fest

-schrifts and obituaries on prominent Indonesian and Southeast Asian economists and public igures.

On Southeast Asia topics, he has edited two inluential books on the economy

of the Philippines (The Philippine Economy: Development, Policy and Challenges, and

The Dynamics of Regional Development: The Philippines in East Asia, both with Arsenio

M. Balisacan, in 2003 and 2007) and one on Malaysia (Malaysia’s Development Chal-lenges: Graduating from the Middle, with Tham Siew Yean and Ragayah Haji Mat

Zin, in 2012). A common characteristic of Hal’s involvement in these publications was his close collaboration with national economists (both editors and authors) while marrying their contributions with those of international scholars. Hal has subsequently published several dozen academic papers covering almost every country in Southeast Asia, on topics ranging from the 1997–98 Asian inancial cri

-sis, macroeconomic policies, trade and investment, manufacturing performance, regional development, and political economy.

Besides writing academic works, Hal regularly participates in conferences and seminars on Indonesia and East Asia, and in other international arenas. He is on the boards of some 13 international journals and a key igure in several develop

-ment economics associations, most notably on the board of the East Asia Econom

-ics Association and as a founding member and one of the driving forces behind the Australasian Development Economics Workshops held at different universi

-ties in Australia each year. Indonesian scholars and policymakers have played prominent roles in both associations.

Hal has also been engaged in a range of consultancy activities for the Austral

-ian (with AusAID and DFAT) and Indones-ian governments, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and several United Nations agencies—again mostly on Indonesian economic policy issues. One special activity in which Hal has played a key leadership role has been the Australian–Indonesian High Level Policy Dia

-logue. Since 2008, this annual meeting, sponsored by the Australian government and hosted jointly by ANU and the Fiscal Policy Unit in the Ministry of Finance in Jakarta, has brought together international academics and Indonesian policymak

-ers in meetings in Australia and Indonesia to discuss and formulate a stance on key policy issues. The indings are reported directly to the minister of inance annually. In 2012, Hal was invited to Indonesia as part of the Presidential Friends of Indone

-sia Program, in acknowledgement of his contribution to development economics

in Indonesia and to fostering good relations between Australia and Indonesia.

On 1 September 2014, Hal decided to retire from his position as the H. W. Arndt Professor of Southeast Asian Economies at ANU, drawing to a close a rich and rewarding career. On behalf of your friends and colleagues, Hal, I wish you all the best for your retirement. It will be a big loss for all of us, in the sense that you will no longer formally be at ANU. But I believe that you will continue to contrib

-ute invaluably to the study of Indonesian and Southeast Asian economics. Terima kasih, Hal—I look forward to receiving your next ‘Hello, apa kabar, bung?’ email.

Jakarta, November 2014