Policy Research
To avoid the middle income trap, Indonesia needs to start shifting its economy to higher-value products, which requires a workforce that has an increasingly high level of knowledge, skills, and competencies. This implies that Indonesia needs to put more serious effort into the improvement of the quality of its education system.
Targeted cash transfer programs have been an important policy tool in developing countries. This paper considers (i) how the timing of transfers affects household expenditure and labor supply responses, and (ii) how household expectations shape our interpretation of those responses.
This paper investigates the relationships between inequality, elite capture, and targeting performance of the two biggest social protection programs in Indonesia, the Rice for the Poor (Raskin) and Direct Cash Transfer (BLT) programs. Both programs differ in their targeting methods. While targeting in Raskin is decentralized, targeting in BLT is more centralized.
Several developing nations, including Indonesia, have experimented with conditional cash transfers (CCTs) to poor households during recent years. Since 2007, Indonesia has been carrying out a randomized CCT pilot program (PNPM Generasi) in 1,625 villages where funds are disbursed to communities rather than households, and local councils allocate the funds to public projects following community input.
The media is increasingly recognized as playing an important role in affecting individual behavior. In this paper, we examine the effect of the expansion of commercial television broadcasting on fertility in Indonesia.
