When President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo took office in 2014, Indonesia was facing stagnating poverty and high inequality. To address these problems, he quickly introduced several initiatives, mainly in the form of social assistance programmes which gave the poor access to education and health...

Indonesia experienced a rapid reduction in poverty during the strong economic growth pre-crisis period. By estimating the impact of sectoral economic growth components on consistently measured poverty rates across regions and over time, this study finds that agricultural growth is the largest...

This study is the first attempt to systematically examine the impact of bad governance practices in Indonesia on poverty reduction. Indonesia is a country that has endured bad governance for a long period, but also has sustained significant poverty reduction. Prior to the onset of the economic...

The potential benefits of accurate targeting are substantial because public expenditures can be concentrated to the needy, thereby saving money and improving program efficiency. However, targeting also entails the administrative costs associated with identifying, reaching, and monitoring...

Although consumption expenditure data is crucial for assessing the level of peoples welfare and calculating important welfare measures such as the poverty headcount rate, collecting such data requires significant time and effort. In this study, we experiment with three approaches to predict...

This study extends the literature on the relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction by differentiating growth and poverty into their sectoral compositions and locations. We find that growth in the rural services sector reduces poverty in all sectors and locations. However, in...