Pro-poor growth in Indonesia: Challenging the pessimism of Myrdal's Asian Drama

Arbeitspapier

This chapter addresses the unrelenting pessimism in Asian Drama about Indonesia's development prospects. This pessimism was based on two key realities: the poor level of governance demonstrated by the Sukarno regime (partly a heritage of Dutch colonial policies) and the extreme poverty witnessed in rural areas. Using historical and modern data on the Indonesian economy, the chapter explains the policy approach that resulted in three decades of rapid, pro-poor growth during the Suharto regime. The Asian financial crisis in 1998 caused the Suharto regime to fall and introduced democratically elected governments. After a decade of stagnation, economic growth returned to the rapid rate seen during the first three decades of the Suharto regime, but it is no longer pro-poor.

Object Details

• ISBN: 978-92-9256-545-9
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: WIDER Working Paper ; No. 2018/103

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; History of Economic Thought since 1925: Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Austrian; Stockholm School ; Measurement and Analysis of Poverty ; Economic History: Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment, and Extractive Industries: Asia including Middle East ; Economywide Country Studies: Asia including Middle East
• Subject: governance ; Indonesia ; pessimism ; poverty ; pro-poor growth

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Timmer, Charles Peter
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)
• (where): Helsinki
• (when): 2018

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.35188/UNU-WIDER/2018/545-9
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/190151
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET