Ari Kuncoro

The Dynamics of Jabotabek Development

This paper examines the dynamics of urban development of the Jakarta metropolitan region, called Jabotabek, from 1980 through the early 1990s. We focus on the rapidly changing spatial allocation of residences and business, finding that Jabotabek is following expected developmental patterns but faces special and some critical problems Population densities remain unusually high and urban development is hindered by very poor land market institutions—weakly defined property rights particularly for traditional low income residents, complete lack of active land use planning, and relatively low infrastructure investments. Industry is rapidly suburbanising to take of advantage of low land prices and wages in suburban Botabek. With toll road construction east and west from the city, within the five-year period 1986–1991, Jabotabek moved from being a monocentric city where core city industrial activity dominated to a predominantly multi-centred city. These developments and implicit government policy have hurt small...

The Political Economy of Indonesian Economic Reforms: 1983-2000

This paper investigates the political economy behind the three economic reforms in Indonesia, in 1983–91, 1994–97 and the reform under the IMF umbrella immediately after the 1997–98 economic crisis. The prevailing belief is that the Indonesian political economy scenario during those periods closely matched that of Weberian patrimonialism, in which the patron–client system was managed personally by Soeharto. Our findings indicate that, whereas economic reform was possible within the patron–client system in the initial stages of economic reform, this was not the case in later stages.

Understanding Indonesian economic reforms, 1983-2000

Indonesia achieved its independence in 1945; however, practically, there was not much room to implement any sort of economic development policy, let alone economic reforms, in the first 20 years of its independence. In practice, this only began when Soeharto came to power in 1966. At that time, inflation ran at 600 per cent per annum, production and trade were stagnant, and the economic infrastructure was in disrepair. Soeharto understood well that the key to sustained public support was to fix the economy.

Exports and Innovation in Indonesian Manufacturing

In this paper we examine the bi-directional relationship between globalization and innovation in Indonesia’s manufacturing sector. The lack of innovation data in the manufacturing survey has necessitated the use of R&D expenditure as an input in the innovation production function. The focus of this study is whether exporting firms do learn from their activities in export markets or firms have to be innovative first, that is, doing R&D before they can go into foreign markets. We find firms have to do R&D first to become competitive in foreign markets. The reverse causality of whether export activities encourage firms to innovations or R&D, though significant, is statistically much weaker. But this does not preclude the possibility that the relationship between exports and R&D activities in Indonesian manufacturing is indeed bi-directional