RAJAWALI MUDA

Team Ekonomi prediksi awal

menebak tim ekonomi Indonesia ke depan

Menko ekuin : sri mulyani
Mendag : marie elka pangestu
Menperin : zulkifliemansyah
Menkeu : Faisal Basri
Kepala BKPM : M luthfi
Kepala Bappenas : chatib basri

Menkokesra : Bachtiar Chamsah
Menteri Sosial : Shohibul Imam
Menteri percepatan pembangunan indonesia timur : Irman Gusman
Menteri pertanian : Mustafa Abu bakar

Influential figure

This guy is amazing. he might be one of the next john bates medal, considering he is only 30 years old, he still has 9 years 11 months 29 days to create more influential articles. His PhD in harvard is about rethinking risk aversion measurement

last time I check he was still a prof in Berkeley, that was two months ago, he get a PhD in Harvard when he was 24, and now on the age of 30 he is a Prof in Harvard. He wrote papers like eating snack, get published in AER several times already in 2009. I can say no more.

Indonesian politics winner : Behavioral economist

Recent political movement in Jakarta, here and here The fact that SBY, JK, and MS is giving an essential proof of prospect theory . Democrat Party as the incumbent strongly hesitates in choosing VP for SBY, JK is doubtful due to its political manouver recently, not to mention "the Bakrie's connection effect", it is risky for SBY to "gamble"on these two names, since lot's of people despises these conglomerates condemning them being voraciously use their political position in expanding their Business. While JK and MS seems not to care too much on their images (well, if any..) the two are now closely intact, while both golkar and PDIP have always been in cold war eversince the new era.

prospect theory predicts that people in good condition tends to be risk averse, and people in bad condition tend to be risk neutral/less risk averse. SBY as the incumbent supported by the winning party on legislative election is in a good mood, while JK and MS are on a desperate mood.

the long and winding road..

I had a seminar with Prof.Paserman from Boston University today, and I was just amazed by his ability to exploit data in empirical work on labour and migration. And so I decided to google his name in case something interesting come up. And there it is something funny, unthinkable, as well as encouraging for me.

the full paper is here

Mercury free gold Mining

I ran across this video on youtube

its about the danger of gold mining using mercury, for me its a surprising as well as intriguing fact
that government action hardly had any effect in prohibiting the use of mercury.

State bans on mercury use is not the answer, people need simply an alternative. Why people can't understand this simple fact?. We made progress on making abandoning fuel subsidy, but still we use such primitive coercion power on mercury bans?

the ministry of environment put a disappointing point while saying that they already put some pressures on large miners about the use of mercury by the state of law. Actually what trouble me the most is the small gold miners, who's digging gold from the pond of mercury left by the old gold miners. why? first because these workers has hardly enough benefit from gold extracting, second, nevertheless they face larger danger on mercury exposure.

In addition people working with the large gold miners could afford for health care and pension funds, and how about these poor people excavating gold using mercury on their bare hands?

I wonder when people might mass produce these kind of alternatives? or this with the great need of substitution goods , and the amount of money invested in gold excavation, may be some researcher from the BPPT could get some money by buying this and put it in mass production?

or may be they did it already,get bored and just too busy to invent some more cool and fancy stuff? and forgot to mass produce?

Long Hiatus to come

I might close this blog for a while.

many things happened these days

I just need to focus my mind

Thank you all for Reading and commenting

May god Bless you all.

Amin.

Rajawalimuda

don't blame it all to globalization

I really do admire Him, his work about transaction cost in sugar farmers in my opinion is quite influential. However I doubt his conclusion here is valid, as Bardhan argued here. Saying the quality of growth is better when less parts of economy liberalized (from the text; translated) I think in some sense misleading, the quality of growth and labor-growth elasticities is too large to be explain by a single variable (globalization), even his colleagues mentioned it years ago, with more detailed versions of possible reasonings.

unemployments and unequal distribution of wealth problem should not make us blaming the rich, Being rich is not a sin, but yes, something need to be done, we can not let the poor trap in poverty but how? not by blaming globalization for sure. Investors in the millenium era will not invest their money on labor-intensive products, instead on products with capital intensive industries with high demand in high skilled workers. That's a solid fact, and to be able to get higher labor-growth elasticities we need more flexibility in job market and more skilled labor.

The world is moving on, and so should we. weisbrod et.al (2007) shows that people moving on from agricultural activities to non-farm work will generally able to move out of poverty, the answer of poverty and wealth distribution in my opinion is not by forcing back young indonesian to farming activities with government subsidies, if they wanted to be a farmer that's fine, but not because government makes them richer than they should have been. Because it distorts occupational choice, and it won't be able to break intergenerational wealth transmission.

who really are the unemployed? young-urban women, we need to make them able to compete in the job market. Human capital training, though will take time to harvest, seems to be highly beneficial. It is interesting to mention that in the article the informal sector seem to be regarded as "bad omen", in fact it contributes largely to the urban working woman.

The limited jobs in formal sectors is only one factor of the thriving informal sectors, another reason is that simply it is profitable to work in informal sectors. The problem of informal sector is the high risks attached and possibilities of working children, however in the contrary it works very well in alleviating poverty for young urban residents. Working in formal sectors doesn't mean having better condition than the informal ones; and there is no high correlation with poverty. In fact the poor (in Indonesia ) is the one who do work in formal sectors.

China and India, the two countries with large growth as mentioned in the article do have large inequalities, it's a transition period, as inequalities will strive in lower level of development, as time goes by, and when people are adjusting, I think this inequalities should goes down.

as a book said about china economy :

"getting rich first"

Making people to work, is not the same by forcing them to work in our preferable professionbut by giving them possibilities to move on, to generate higher returns in the future. Such as better public education and health services provision. The rest will depend on their free-will.

a self interest benevolence

Being blustered around by all this talking about ultra-nationalist hardcore, who thinks tackling foreign capital and investment, and confiscating foreign ownership, making it government owned companies are the solution for our country. Yes, the one and only, our dear CAPRES 2009 (mr. You-know-who). They seems to talk about asset accumulation, selling cheap ideas, that having such assets in government hand will make poor people better off.

let see, when Indosat (the one mr.You-know-who always bragging about) was in our hands, do poor people get benefit from that? when Pertamina got rich do poor people will directly increase their welfare? a clue, NO.

but hey, when Indosat got privatized, what had happened? the cost of calling people suddenly drop, Telkomsel was forced to pull some strings too on their profit. Good thing for the less fortunate people huh? of course not for the richer ones, they lost lots of profit from Indosat selling. but hey for now we get cheaper price, but unfortunately crappy quality as well. Need more option in the market though, Big players such asTelkomsel and Indosat might need a better competitor in the future. So we can get better provider, with cheaper services.

Back to assets, I am really not an expert in this, and I am not writing this to show that I am having some kind of renaissance in religious thinking. I just think this is a good idea to distribute assets and more opportunities and empowerment to the poor, yes its about assets, just less "ekonomi rakyat", or "komprador", or anti "neoliberal" label in it.

mind you, but the only one who getting rich has always been the one with greater access to the power, and hence I don't really think having assets like Indosat, caltex, (or whatsoever the target of the you-know-who) might benefit the poor. Instead the poor will still be marginalized by our bureaucratic systems.

If you consider yourself nationalists you might consider to contribute to this or this. its all about a collective action in providing public services. No unlawful confiscating asset needed, just a simple philanthropy. Remember that Adam smith, the father of economics, strongly advise small government, but he himself regard benevolence as a supreme virtue. A free will based benevolence, a self-interest benevolence.

Ayo Indonesia !

I must in some sense agree with yusuf kalla. our economy is growing 6 percent, while others on the verge of breaking down. In this case the government's economic ministers must be given some credit. SBY and JK, despite of many blunders they have made, in some point have courageously shown their plan in putting away our nation dependence on oil source-fuel. This is as well need to be given extra credit, while all other preceding presidents have no guts to do.

Our nation is evolving, and criticism from fellow economists is good, as long as it is not intended for political purposes.

it is easy to distinguish political criticism, First, it is almost always come from the same groups/political party/ and politicians. Second, these critics seems to be related with normative terms than empirical studies. Third, most of this politician only say what people want to hear, and never ever do the opposite.

Satu tulisan kompas yang menyedihkan

Ini adalah tipikal tulisan konspirasi. Suatu artikel yang menyedihkan karena (1) tidak dilandasi bukti empiris yang kuat, (2)satu satunya referensi adalah tulisan dari sebuah buku, dan (3) cara pengambilan kesimpulan yang tidak objektif. Tulisan seperti ini jelas tidak layak masuk kompas. Bahkan untuk edisi online nya yang kian hari kian menyerupai kembaran detik.com. Menyamakan kebijakan SAP IMF dengan perdagangan global adalah menyesatkan. Penulis menyatukan berbagai macam informasi yang ada, kemudian merangkai menjadi sebuah tulisan yang entah suatu hasil investigasi yang lengkap atau tidak.

artikel ini juga menyesatkan karena ;

pertama, IMF bukan representasi perdagangan global, entah apa justifikasinya perdagangan global direduksi menjadi satu institusi keuangan internasional. Pernahkah ada teori yang menyatakan begitu? perdagangan bebas adalah IMF? saya yakin tidak. Jikalau artikel ini hendak menyerang SAP IMF, maka objek serangan adalah IMF, bukan perdagangan bebas.
Kedua, justru sistem subsidi di eropa barat untuk petani nya yang membuat investasi pertanian di negara berkembang terhambat, (1) karena negara berkembang tidak diijinkan menjual hasil pangan sesuai dengan harga keekonomiannya, subsidi di eropa dan amerika mengkamuflase harga, dan membuat investasi tidak berkembang. (2) Ada kuota tertentu dalam pengiriman barang pertanian. artinya ada dua pembatasan, baik dari harga maupun kuantitas.
contoh negara haiti misalnya, yang ditekankan adalah IMF memotong tariff, padahal memotong tariff akan membuat penduduk akan mendapatkan harga beras yang murah dengan kuantitas yang lebih banyak. jadi pemotongan tariff bukan lah masalahnya, tapi subsidi di amerika dan eropa yang membuat padi non-organik mereka lebih murah. Tentu sisi buruk subsidi ini tidak dibahas di artikel yang tidak objektif seperti ini, yang dilihat hanya sisi yang bisa membantu anti-tesis nya terhadap perdagangan bebas.
Ketiga, artikel ini juga mengesampingkan efek lain yang menyebabkan kenaikan harga pangan, seolah olah kenaikan harga pangan hanya dipicu oleh kebijakan salah dari IMF. Kenaikan harga minyak, dan fakta bahwa semakin banyak penduduk dunia yang mengkonsumsi daging dan oleh karenanya meningkatnya konsumsi pakan ternak juga adalah faktor signifikan yang secara sengaja disembunyikan dari pembaca. Satu tipikal tulisan kelas tabloid yang tidak objektif, ditulis demi melonjaknya tiras dan jumlah pembaca.
Keempat, meningkatnya produksi crops (bahan pangan yang bisa dijual) dan menurunnya produksi staple foods di negara negara afrika juga hanya dilihat dari sudut pandang yang sempit. Petani bergerak berdasarkan insentif, ketika harga barang pangan ditekan, sedangkan harga crops menjulang, tentu mereka akan memproduksi crops. Kunci disini adalah ketersediaan pasar untuk menjual crops tersebut. Keterbukaan pasar membuat mereka bisa mengalokasikan sebagian produksinya kepada bahan pangan yang menghasilkan uang, di sisi lain petani tidak memiliki insentif untuk meningkatkan produksi staple foods, karena tidak ada pasar disini. Pembeli dan penjual tidak bebas menjual hasil produksinya. Yang berbahaya adalah ketika kedua pasar tidak berjalan, petani akan menuju ke arah produksi yang self-subsistence dan produktivitas menurun tajam.

Investasi terhadap bahan pangan memang seharusnya dilakukan, tapi savings dan investasi tidak harus dilakukan oleh pemerintah, swasta harus diikut sertakan, Kebijakan pembatasan impor dan intervensi harga juga akan menggiring ke arah yang salah di kemudian hari.

Menyedihkan karena smua kata kata artikel ini akan ditelan bulat bulat bagi pembaca kompas dimanapun berada, dan kompas sebagai pendistribusi informasi bertanggung jawab penuh atasnya. Hanya untuk seonggok tiras, informasi dibelokkan sedemikian rupa.

Organda tak pernah bermutu!

Lagi lagi ocehan lama , kapan ya organda akan dewasa? bertahun disusui, masih saja merengek rengek setelah "disapih" minta lagi disusui, sedihnya para petualang politik "standar" di pucuk sana akan cari kesempatan simpati dengan bilang wah, iya nih pertamina korupsi, negara kita neolib, turunkan sby, bla bla bla.. sama seperti ketika harga BBM dinaikan.

dan masih kah rakyat kita mendengar ocehan retorik ini? bisa jadi.

kalo kita menilik fenomena lebih jernih, sebenarnya apa masalahnya disini?

kita review faktanya : bis antar negara malaysia lebih murah, sedangkan bis kita lebih mahal, Penumpang adalah pekerja indonesia yang tingkat pendapatannya rendah. sekarang masalahnya adalah para pengusaha organda gak mau ilang untung, mereka gak mau bis malaysia ngambil semua sumber uangnya, tanpa memikirkan jalan lain mereka minta harga BBM nya di subsidi.

catatan : (1)Bahkan dengan subsidi pun disparitas harga masih tinggi antara malaysia dan bis organda (2) Dengan hanya terdiri dari tiga perusahaan bis organda jelas monopoli atau oligopoli, yang mempermainkan harga dan kualitas pelayanan bagi para pekerja berpendapatan rendah.

jikalau para politikus itu mendukung para pencari rente ini, maka apakah mereka membela rakyat? tentu tidak, siapa yang dibela? pengusaha yang memaksa harga tinggi. Tidak perduli apakah itu bis berbendera malaysia atau israel sekalipun, asalkan mereka menawarkan harga lebih rendah jelas akan lebih baik bagi pekerja miskin daripada berbendera indonesia dengan harga mencekik.

Biarkan saja lah pengusaha itu bersaing secara sehat, pengusaha punya akses terhadap uang dan fasilitas, asalkan tidak manja seharusnya mereka mesti melakukan terobosan, apalah itu yang bisa membuat pasar menjadi monopolistik, membuat mereka menjadi unik. Bukannya merngek memohon uang pemerintah. Malah menuduh pertamina cari untung, kalo pertamina dapat untung baik dong buat budget pemerintah? cuma tiga pengusaha bis ini yang rugi, mesti kerja lebih keras.

jika mereka disubsidi lagi, ada dua kerugian, pertama pemerintah mesti ngasih duit ke mereka (dalam bentuk subsidi) duit pemerintah buat yang keperluan lain terpakai. Untuk siapa? untuk organda tak bermutu! untuk organda ini pemerintah harus rela kekurangan duit untuk infrastruktur dan beasiswa pendidikan, sungguh tak masuk logika orang yang membela para pengusaha malas ini.

ide muluk dan basi AR

Another so called great idea of AR,

(1) ekonomi rakyat vs ekonomi pasar,
(yeah right, just go home and rest..ide ide anti-kolonial ini udah basi, berdebu dan sumpek. Ngerti ekonomi pasar aja nggak, sok sok ngomong ekonomi rakyat, apa sih ekonomi rakyat?

apaa ituuuu ekonomi rakyaaatttttt???

knapa ekonomi pasar berlawanan ekonomi rakyat?

btw, sejak kapan negara kita adopsi ekonomi pasar? apa karena harga BBM gak disubsidi? apa karena kita berdagang dengan negara lain? the fact that the state still subsidize many things, and BUMN people is still running around on the market, or when we are still paying for the DPR bills (and of course was his bills) then we are not on the free-market economy!, which is not our goal by the way, however competitive market is. not free market per se! jikalau saudara AR lebih jeli, seharusnya tau apa itu definisi ekonomi pasar, atau setidaknya tidak mengumbar umbar kalimat yang tidak dia mengerti.

Sebagai orang tua saudara AR sebaiknya melihat lebih jernih dan bijak, lihat lah sesuatu dari sisi yang berbeda, baru ambil kesimpulan. Sayangnya saudara AR dkk terlalu mabuk dengan ketokohannya, dan hanya mendengar orang yang selalu setuju dengannya. Seperti halnya ketiga tokoh presiden sebelum SBY.

(2) tidak memiliki mental bangsa asing superior, lah sapa ya yang punya pikiran ini?, memiliki anti-bangsa asing superior bukan berarti bangsa asing itu musuh toh? imperialisme, sekrup, kacung, apa lah istilahnya, kan istilah anda juga bung AR, sekarang jaman negara negara kerja sama, ini malah pengen menutup diri, makin ketinggalan toh, mana tuh yang punya visi ke depan? saya juga bisa kasih saran, liat bangsa lain itu sebagai sesama manusia, bukan musuh jaman perang.

(3) menegosiasi ulang kontrak migas, ok trus, apa? ujung ujung nya kan cita -citanya mau macem fadjroel rachman yang nasionalisasi aset? jaman 1945-an aja sampe sekarang aset belanda yang dinasionalisasi masih jadi masalah besar buat kita, BUMN kita yang produktif dan efisien cuma segelintir, trus sekarang mau ngambil semua aset yang ada biar dikelola pemerintah? pertamina ngurus gas aja berabe, ini mo dikasi blok blok lain? Yah ambil aja deh bung fadjroel, ambroel udah negara kita ntar.

kalo rakyat indonesia aja bosan dengan retorika SBY sekarang, apa masih bisa nerima komentar komentar retorik macam begini? blom lagi ocehan sarumpaet yang ngaco naujubilah..blah smoga aja presiden taun depan gak kayak begini begini..

Capres 2009

Senang nonton dan baca tulisan ini.

betul banget omonganya tulisan ini, dua capres terakhir di liputan 6 cuma Napsu ingin tenar modal omong kosong..

Sarumpaet kelaut ajeee...

Intermezzo on one of these hectic days

Been busy with my so called memoire and I stumbled upon this guy, wow, his works are always amazing, at least for me I can't resist to "blogmarks" it here. one recent paper discussed in Rodrik's Blog, yeah! even he, got impressed. Very interesting indeed...

update : oil price is skyrocketing, 144 USD/barrel, yeah and those guys in Senayan are still acting Mr.Right for the sake of political expected return in 2009. what a crap.

Nice writing from a first year student

I consider This a sincere and honest writing of a first year student in FEUI in the jakarta post, I found it very nice and encouraging. I share the same awkward feeling when I was taught by Mme Sri mulyani, it was my third year on advanced macroeconomics and it keeps me survive up to the very moment.

I was really amazed by the cool stuffs in the US electoral news at the CNN, all the graphs and statistics, not to mention all touch screen describing political strategy reviews. And I understand that the electoral projection is as sophisticated as in the news.

I would like to have this cool stuffs and projections in poverty rate and well being level some day, in Indonesia. yeah may be someday, minute to minute headcount poverty rate. Hope someday this kind of data will be profitable enough to cover the maintenance cost. hey, people can always their wildest dream right?

Welfare = cheap gasoline ? mind you Mr.Expert

This is what happen when you define people's welfare and optimal consumption by your own subjective thinking. oh yes, some expert (was) from the constitutional court prefer to say that welfare is cheap gasoline and no other else. Great just great!, now I know why they don't really know what they are talking about.

the only thing they understand about welfare is that gasoline is cheap, end of story. Yeah right and why all the best welfare state in the world had their gasoline prices even higher than the international market? (which means taxing it instead of subsidizing in scandinavia!) You say they don't have oil reserves? nope, they had lot's of oil all over them, they just choose something better to do than oil subsidy, like perfect health service, technology and education support. And they are on the way of liberty as they learned lesson from their 70's mistakes.

people should stop saying things they don't understand. that's pure logic.

Selamat jalan mba winefrida...

Indonesia has just lost one of her prominent researcher in poverty research. Mba Wina (Winefrida Widyanti) of SMERU, passed away on 23th may 2008, I received the first hand sad news from her colleague, a friend of mine. This is a very shocking news for me, even though I do not know much about Mba Wina, we do communicate intensely by mail, due to data analysis consultations, and indeed she had given me an enourmous help on my thesis work, plus priceless advices and encouragement from a researcher in her level. Once I asked her about regional poverty line calculation, and her respond was copying the poverty line details from a book, to a word document, so that she could put it in an attachement for me. This incredible deed is something that I will not forget. May god bless you for your kindness mba wina.

Her papers have been refered by many prominent researcher in poverty level including Martin Ravallion and Jotsyna Jalan, her work on poverty research is a major stepping stone in poverty research in Indonesia.

selamat jalan mba wina, smoga amal ibadah mbak wina di balas dengan berlipat ganda.

Amin..

28 may 2008

new ways to contribute

wow, this is new, proud of you guys lads..
Your report is not the thing that matters, it is the changing ways of voicing le voix du peuple that matters, this is exactly what to do, discussion is always a better solution.
Let's discriminate our self than non-intellectuals, and preman wannabe!

Lesson from Emil salim ; Thank you sir

let's unite Economists newbies!
see how Emil salim speaking about Total football economics! Creativity and value added Economics for the better future! let's them fight with all political crap, but we should not rest to show what's wrong and what's right, for the better sake of our country!

RAJAWALI MUDA

Updated oil price turmoils

About Me

Me Wannabe

Personal Enlightment

Travelling

Live Traffic Feed

Famous Quotes

Blogroll

Recent Comments

News sources

Recent Posts

Blog Archive

INFO BEASISWA

Free exchange | Economist.com