Did social safety net scholarships reduce drop-out rates during the Indonesian economic crisis?

The author uses regression and matching techniques to evaluate Indonesia's Social Safety Net Scholarships Program, which was developed to keep large numbers of children from dropping out of school as a result of the Asian crisis. It was expected that many families would find it difficult to keep their children in school and that dropout rates would be high, as they were during a recession in the 1980s. But dropouts did not increase markedly and enrollment rates remained relatively steady. The author examines the role the scholarship program played in producing this result. She found the scholarships to have been effective in reducing dropouts in the lower secondary school (where students are more susceptible to dropping out) by about 3 percentage points. They had no discernible impact in primary and upper secondary schools. The author also examines how well the program adhered to its documented targeting design and how effective that design was in reaching the poor. Committees that allocated the scholarships followed the criteria diligently, but a significant percentage of scholarships did go to students from households with high reported per capita expenditures, if household expenditure data are reliable. It is unclear how targeting can be improved, giving the scarcity of accurate local household data in most countries. Using local monitoring could help but then monitoring for accountability would be more difficult. Preliminary evidence favors focusing safety net scholarships--designed to reduce dropout rates during an economic crisis--on lower secondary schools, continuing to target children (especially older students) from large families, scaling back scholarships to private schools at the lower secondary level, or targeting the households hurt most by the crisis.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Public Health Promotion,Teaching and Learning,Information Technology,Housing&Human Habitats,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Teaching and Learning,Information Technology,Housing&Human Habitats,Primary Education

The impact of the Indonesian financial crisis on children : data from 100 villages survey

The author examines the Asian crisis's impact on children in 100 Indonesian villages, based on data from four rounds of the 100 villages surveys that was used to examine changes in health status, school attendance rates, and children's participation in the labor force. She finds little evidence that the crisis had a dramatically negative impact on children. School attendance dropped slightly after the onset of the crisis but then rebounded to higher-than-pre-crisis levels. Fewer children are now working, although the older children who are working and are not attending school seem to be working longer hours. Children's health status appears to be relatively stable, although comparisons of indicators of children's health status over time are complicated by changes in the questionnaire used. The author also examines ways households reported they were coping with the crisis.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Public Health Promotion,Children and Youth,Early Child and Children's Health,Housing&Human Habitats,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Street Children,Youth and Governance,Children and Youth,Child Labor

Tortious Toxics

In this Article we offer one small idea with potentially large implications. We propose the recognition arid development of a special tort for toxic exposures, where the exposures have not yet led to a physical illness such as cancer. We argue, in brief, that this new tort would, in one simple step, accomplish three things: it would address many of the problems with the courts\u27 current handling of toxic torts; it would consolidate the many overlapping causes of action now pressed in toxic tort cases into one single claim; and it would give expression to the real injury motivating these cases - a dignitary and autonomy-based harm, not a physical one

The Role of the ISO in U.S. Electricity Markets: A Review of Restructuring in California and PJM

Despite their design differences, both the California and the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland markets provide explicit roles for competition in the scheduling functions while allowing the ISO to manage the spot market. Experience has shown that both can work.Auctions; Electicity Restructuring

The impact of minimum wages on employment in a low income country : an evaluation using the difference-differences approach

Unlike the well-developed literature on the employment impact of the minimum wage in industrial nations, very little is known about minimum wage effects in low income countries. Minimum wages increased sharply in Indonesia between 1990 and 1996 and by more in some provinces than in others. Following Card and Krueger (1994) the authors exploit the large geographic variation in the rate of increase and compare changes in employment in the clothing, textile, footwear, and leather industries on either side of the Jakarta-West Java border. They use household level labor market data to establish compliance with the legislation. They obtain matched difference-in-difference estimates of the employment impact using a census of all large and medium-size firms in the clothing, textile, leather, and footwear industries. The authors find some evidence of a negative employment impact for small, domestic firms but no employment impact for large firms, foreign or domestic.Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Public Health Promotion,Labor Policies,Municipal Financial Management,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Child Labor,Municipal Financial Management,Health Monitoring&Evaluation

Impact Evaluation of a Large-Scale Rural Sanitation Project in Indonesia

Total Sanitation and Sanitation Marketing (TSSM) is the Indonesian component of World Bank Water and Sanitation Program's Scaling Up Rural Sanitation initiative. The approach consists of raising awareness of the problems of open defecation; marketing sanitation products; and supporting policies, financing, training, and regulations that are conducive to these efforts. Therefore, desired outcomes of the program include changes in perception of the consequences of poor sanitation, toilet construction and access to improved sanitation, reduction in open defecation, and child health outcomes. This impact evaluation assesses these results using a randomized controlled trial (RCT), and unlike many RCTs that are carried out on pilot programs, it looks at an intervention that has been implemented at scale and led by the government under real-world conditions, providing more reliable estimates. TSSM is associated with sanitation improvements overall, particularly among wealthier households that had no sanitation prior to the intervention

Old-Age Support in Indonesia: Labor Supply, Intergenerational Transfers and Living Arrangements.

This is the first paper of which we are aware that attemps to formally model the supply-supply behavior of elderly individuals in a developing countryWithout broad-based public pension schemes, the majority of the elderly in developing countries are left to rely on their current and accumulated earnings and support from children as means of support.DEVELOPING COUNTRIES ; AGED ; PENSIONS

Economic Geography and Wages

This paper estimates the agglomeration benefits that arise from vertical linkages between firms in the context of Indonesia. The analysis is based on international trade and economic geography theory developed by Krugman and Venables (1995). We identify the agglomeration benefits off the spatial variation in firm level nominal wages. Unusually detailed intermediate input data allow us to more accurately capture spatial input/output linkages than in previous studies. We take account of the location of input suppliers to estimate cost linkages; and the location of demand from final consumers and other firms to estimate demand linkages. The results show that the externalities that arise from demand and cost linkages are quantitatively important and highly localized. An understanding of the extent and strength of spatial linkages is crucial in shaping policies that seek to influence regional development.agglomeration, economic geography, vertical linkages.

Do Coresidency with and Financial Transfers from Children Reduce the Need for Elderly Parents to Work in Developing Countries?

What drives the labor supply decisions of the elderly in developing countries? To what extent do elderly parents use coresidence with or financial transfers from children to reduce their own labor supply in old age? These questions are increasingly important because populations in many developing countries are rapidly aging. A clear understanding of the relationships between different means of support in old age is crucial to the development of sensible policy responses. This paper is one of only a few studies that seeks to formally model elderly labor supply in the context of a developing country while taking into account coresidency with and financial transfers from children. We find little evidence that support from children – either through transfers or coresidency – substitutes for elderly parents’ need to work. Thus, as in developed countries, there is a role for public policy to enhance the welfare of the elderly population.Intergenerational transfers, Old-age support, Elderly labor supply

Subject Pool Effects in a Corruption Experiment: A Comparison of Indonesian Public Servants and Indonesian Students

We report results from a corruption experiment with Indonesian public servants and Indonesian students. Our results suggest that although both subject pools show a high level of concern with the extent of corruption in Indonesia, the Indonesian public servant subjects have a significantly lower tolerance of corruption than the Indonesian students. We find no evidence that this is due to a selection effect. The reasons given by the public servants for either engaging in or not engaging in corruption suggest that the differences in behavior across the subject pools are driven by their different real life experiences. For example, when abstaining from corruption public servants more often cite the need to reduce the social costs of corruption as a reason for their actions, and when engaging in corruption they cite low government salaries or a belief that corruption is a necessary evil in the current environment. In contrast, students give more simplistic moral reasons. We conclude by arguing that experiments such as the one considered in this paper can be used to measure forward-looking attitudinal change in society and that results obtained from different subject pools can complement each other in the determination of such attitudinal changes.Corruption, Experiments, Subject Pool Effects