Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Preface and Acknowledgements to the First Edition
- Preface and Acknowledgements to the Second Edition
- Glossary and Abbreviations
- Maps
- 1 Introduction
- 2 An Overview of Economic Development Since 1966
- 3 Money and Finance
- 4 Fiscal Policy
- 5 International Dimensions
- 6 The State and Public Policy: Ideology and Intervention
- 7 Agricultural Modernization
- 8 The Industrial Transformation
- 9 The Services Revolution
- 10 Poverty, Inequality and Social Progress
- 11 The Regional Dimension: Patterns and Issues
- 12 Conclusion: Looking to the Future
- 13 Postscript on the Crisis
- Chronology of Major Economic Events, 1965 to 1993
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index of Author Citations
- Index
13 - Postscript on the Crisis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Preface and Acknowledgements to the First Edition
- Preface and Acknowledgements to the Second Edition
- Glossary and Abbreviations
- Maps
- 1 Introduction
- 2 An Overview of Economic Development Since 1966
- 3 Money and Finance
- 4 Fiscal Policy
- 5 International Dimensions
- 6 The State and Public Policy: Ideology and Intervention
- 7 Agricultural Modernization
- 8 The Industrial Transformation
- 9 The Services Revolution
- 10 Poverty, Inequality and Social Progress
- 11 The Regional Dimension: Patterns and Issues
- 12 Conclusion: Looking to the Future
- 13 Postscript on the Crisis
- Chronology of Major Economic Events, 1965 to 1993
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index of Author Citations
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
The 1998 annual World Bank (1998a, p. 1) assessment of Indonesia observed:
Indonesia is in deep crisis. A country that achieved decades of rapid growth, stability, and poverty reduction, is now near economic collapse … No country in recent history, let alone one the size of Indonesia, has ever suffered such a dramatic reversal of fortune.
Just as, until recently, explaining why the East Asian economies grew so fast was a major preoccupation of economists and political scientists, now all of a sudden the big question of our time is to understand how and why economies such as Indonesia dramatically fell off their high-growth trajectories. Why didn't economists foresee the events of 1997–98? How can seemingly robust and vigorous economies fall so far, so swiftly?
These questions are all the more challenging when it is remembered that Indonesia was widely hailed as a model for many other developing countries, especially late developers in Africa. Its record was scrutinized for insights into how to:
▪ accomplish swift stabilization after a bout of hyperinflation;
▪ effectively manage a commodity boom;
▪ revitalize the food crop economy;
▪ adjust effectively and quickly to a sudden and large terms of trade decline;
▪ promote rapid poverty reduction;
▪ register good regional distribution outcomes; and
▪ achieve a major demographic transition.
Now, sadly, the study of Indonesia is more likely to be motivated by a desire to avoid the kind of ferocious economic and financial collapse the country has had to endure since late 1997.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Indonesian Economy , pp. 260 - 292Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000