Policy Research
The overall purpose of this research project is to document the experience of the poor in facing food price volatility, in a form that enables common, policy-relevant insights into how food price volatility plays out in developing countries.
Rising food prices, increasing urbanisation, rising numbers of working women and reduced time for care has led to more children eating more pre-prepared and instant food in Indonesia. Besides the durability of much packaged food, its price is also less volatile and often cheaper than fresh food.
We use a large-scale unconditional cash transfer program in Indonesia to investigate the importance of timing in shaping household consumption responses to fiscal interventions. Timely receipt of transfers yields no expenditure change relative to non-recipients. However, delayed receipt reduces expenditures by 7.5 percentage points. Ignoring heterogeneous timing leads to sizable underestimates of expenditure impacts.
The SMERU Research Institute underwent three critical transitions during 2014. First, the direct support from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) to SMERU was formally transferred to one of its programs, the Knowledge Sector Initiative (KSI).
This research aims to explore opportunities to increase the profile of unpaid care work in public policy discourse. It is part of a global study on unpaid care work organized by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). The study, which involves Indonesia and Bangladesh, explores different political conditions that have made policymakers acknowledge or neglect the significance of unpaid care work.
