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This paper examines the impact of export orientation, import competition, foreign ownership, and the rate of capital accumulation on the relative demand for skilled and unskilled labor in pre-crisis Indonesia.
Since the late 1980s, minimum wages have become an important plank of the Indonesian government's labour policy. Their levels have increased faster in real terms than those of average wages and per capita gross domestic product and, as a result, minimum wages have become binding for the majority of formal sector workers.
We extend the standard concept of static benefit incidence to dynamic benefit incidence––the relationship between program benefits and changes in household expenditures. Using panel data we compare the static and dynamic benefit incidence of two programs: sales of subsidized rice targeted on administrative criteria and a set of public employment schemes based on self-selection targeting.
The economic crisis caused a clear deterioration in the welfare of the Indonesian people. In this paper, we examine the appropriate method to compare the change in poverty rates over time. We then piece together a consistent series of estimates of poverty rates during the crisis from various sources, covering a period from February 1996 to February 2002.
The social safety net programmes, which were created by the Government of Indonesia in early 1998, are intended to help protect both the traditionally poor and those who have become the newly poor — due to the economic crisis — in coping with the impacts of the crisis.

