Riau

This paper attempts to answer some questions about the financial capacity of local governments to implement regional autonomy. In the early stages of the implementation of autonomy, financial aspects have been crucial for every kabupaten and kota administration¹. According to Laws No.22, 1999 and No.25, 1999, financial management is an important indicator of local government performance in determining whether they can continue as autonomous entities or should be merged with other neighboring kabupaten or kota.

In this paper we investigate the determinants of student performance in mathematics and dictation tests among fourth-grade school children in Indonesia. We use a unique dataset of school and student information that was collected in a nationally representative survey of 110 public schools in 8 Indonesian provinces in 2003. Using an OLS regression technique that compensates for heteroskedasticity, we conduct separate sets of student-level regressions for three performance variables: math scores, dictation scores and combined scores.