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Halting Progress: Indonesia's Economic Development since 1880*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2010
Extract
This article contains a sweeping summary of Indonesia's macro-economic growth and development experience since 1880, largely on the basis of quantitative data from published research. It sets the scene for some of the other papers in this special issue. The paper identifies phases of economic expansion and contraction and some of the broad factors relevant to understanding the phasing of the development process that spans 120 years. Despite the halting progress in the country's development experience, the article underlines the continuity of economic change in Indonesia, beyond the years that demarcate the end of the colonial era. It also addresses the fact that in comparative terms Indonesia's growth experience during the twentieth century was remarkably fast.
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- Type
- Conference: ‘Economic Growth and Institutional Change in Indonesia in the 19th and 20th Centuries’
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- Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2002
References
Notes
1 Eng, Pierre van der, ‘The “Colonial Drain” from Indonesia, 1823–1990’, Research School of Pacific Studies, Economics Division Working Paper, Southeast Asia 93/2 (Canberra 1993) 30.Google Scholar
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3 Annual average growth of per capita GDY (GDP in constant prices, corrected for changes in the barter terms of trade) during 1900–1929 was 1.1 per cent per year, compared to 1.6 per cent GDP growth. Eng, Pierre van der, ‘Indonesia's Growth Performance in the 20th Century’ in: Angus Maddison, D.S. Prasada Rao and Shepherd, W.F. eds, The Asian Economies in the Twentieth Century (Cheltenham 2002) 157Google Scholar.
4 These are very rough and preliminary estimates and have to be taken with extreme caution. The estimate of private investment is likely to be too high up to the 1980s, although the estimate for public investment is likely to be much too low. A comparison of Tables 2 and 3 shows significant differences in the ratios of exports and GDP.
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9 Some would argue that educational attainment is a proxy for human capital formation and a contributing factor to economic growth and productivity change, or the lack of both. However, studies of the contribution of education to economic growth in the United States raise substantial doubts about the immediate relevance of the cognitive content of formal education to the processes through which the productivity of the workforce was being enhanced. In fact, accumulation of work force experience was found to be a more important determinant of differential earnings. See Mozes Abramovitz and David, Paul, ‘Two Centuries of American Macroeconomic Growth: From Exploitation of Resource Abundance to Knowledge-Driven Development’, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research Discussion Paper 01–05 (Stanford 2001) 157.Google Scholar Hence, educational attainment is perhaps more relevant as an indicator of the standard of living.
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