Macroeconomic Policies for Growth in Small Pacific Island Economies

This paper examines macroeconomic performance and policies in small Pacific island economies (SPIEs). These economies are highly prone to various supply shocks and face severe obstacles to development arising from their geography and demography. However, the paper contends that their lacklustre growth performance over the last two decades has also been due to excessively conservative macroeconomic policies. That is, a confluence of supply shocks and policy-induced constrained demand has resulted in poor economic performance. Given a very weak private sector, poor state of infrastructure and low-level human capital, the paper argues for the leading role of the government. It then elaborates on the elements of macroeconomic policies within a state-led development strategy.Pacific islands, macroeconomics, growth, aid, fiscal policy

Pushing It To The Edge: Extending Generalised Regression As A Spatial Microsimulation Method

This paper extends a spatial microsimulation model to test how the model behaves after adding different constraints, and how results using univariate constraint tables rather than multivariate constraint tables compare. This paper also tests how well non-Capital city households from a survey can estimate areas within capital cities. Using all households available in Australian survey means that the spatial microsimulation method has more households to choose from to represent the constraints in the area being estimated. In theory, this should improve the fit of the model. However, a household from another area may not be representative of households in the area being estimated. We found that, in the case that the estimated statistics is already closely related to the benchmarks used, adding a number of benchmarks had little effect on the number of areas where estimates couldn’t be made, and had little effect on the accuracy of our estimates in areas where estimates could be made. However, the advantage of using more benchmarks was that the weights can be used to estimate a wider variety of outcome variables. We also found that more complex bi-variate benchmarks gave better results compared to simpler univariate benchmarks; and that using a specific sub-sample of observations from a survey gave better results in smaller capital cities in Australia (Adelaide and Perth).

Macroeconomic policies for growth in small Pacific island economies

This paper examines the macroeconomic performance of the Pacific island countries. It includes analyses of economic growth, inflation and balances of payment, and the possible contributions of fiscal, monetary and exchange rate policies. Wherever possible, comparisons are made with small island economies in other regions, such as in the Caribbean. Finally, the paper provides a general framework for macroeconomic policies as part of a state-led development strategy

Indonesia’s Changing Economic Geography

Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelagic state, and one of the most spatially diverse nations on earth in its resource endowments, population settlements, location of economic activity, ecology and ethnicity. The regional socio-economic data base now extends over 30 years, and so it is possible to draw conclusions about the country’s regional development dynamics since the 1970s. In this paper, we examine economic growth, inequality, convergence, structural change and social indicators for a consolidated group of 26 provinces, ie, the 27 of the late Soeharto period excluding East Timor. Our major conclusions include the following: (a) There continues to be great diversity in economic and social outcomes, but growth and social progress have been remarkably even. The poorest regions, mainly located in Eastern Indonesia, have generally performed about as well as the national average. (b) The better performing regions are typically those that are the most ‘connected’ to the global economy. In this respect, Jakarta stands out as a special case, growing richer than the rest of the country over time. (c) As expected, conflict is particularly harmful to economic development, as illustrated in the case of Maluku and to a lesser extent Aceh. (d) There is no clear natural resource story, in that the performance of the resource-rich provinces has varied considerably.Economic Geography, economic growth, convergence, Indonesia

Issues in spatial microsimulation estimation: a case study of child poverty

Spatial microsimulation techniques have become an increasingly popular way to fulfil the need for generating small area data estimates. Nevertheless, this technique poses numerous methodological challenges, including those that relate to fundamental differences between the multiple data sources which spatial microsimulation techniques seek to combine. Using two different databases simultaneously to produce estimates of population characteristics may come up against problems related to different distributions of key variables within the two databases. Such differences can make it difficult to adequately validate small area estimates, as it can be hard to assess whether differences between synthetic and original data are due to failures or inaccuracies within the estimation procedure, or simply to the differences within the underlying data. This study presents a case study of this problem using a very important small area estimate – child poverty rates. We compare how income distributions for children are different in two Australian databases being combined within a spatial microsimulation model. We then assess the extent to which this affects our estimates of child poverty, and gauge its impact on the apparent validity of these synthetic small area poverty rates.Microsimulation, Spatial, Inequality

Barriers in XBRL based Interagency Accounting Information Sharing: Qualitative Evidence from Indonesia

The purpose of this research is to examine barriers in interagency information sharing (IIS). The type of shared information that this research focuses on is the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) based financial statements sent by businesses to government agencies. Several researchers attempted to develop theoretical models related to IIS barriers by classifying them into three perspectives, i.e. organizational, technological, and political/policy perspectives. However, as suggested by previous literature, there is a need to apply the framework in non-western countries. This study is employing a qualitative approach by interviewing some key informants from government agencies. The research is engaging with five Indonesian government agencies. At the current state of the research, three barriers have been synthesized as the findings. As future research work, some other barriers have to be analyzed and synthesized by the study to give a more comprehensive understanding