Food security is an important social objective and relying on international food markets to meet the needs of Indonesia's growing population is precarious. The policy of restricting food imports through tariffs or quantitative restrictions promotes the goal of food self-sufficiency, but does so...

Indonesia is a net importer of almost all of its staple foods. National selfsufficiency in food, especially the main staple, rice, is a core objective of economic policy. Poverty reduction is also a core policy objective. Since the 1970s, Indonesia has used agricultural input subsidies,...

Both cross sectional and panel methods of analysis for Laos confirm that for public education and health services, the poorest quintile groups receive the smallest shares of total provision of these services. Nevertheless, poor groups’ shares of an increase in the level of provision...

Spikes in international food prices in 2007-2008 worsened poverty incidence in Indonesia, both rural and urban, but only by small amounts. The paper reaches this conclusion using a multi-sectoral and multi-household general equilibrium model of the Indonesian economy. The negative effect on poor...

Thailand’s impressive long-term rate of economic growth has resulted mainly from accumulation of physical capital. Significant total factor productivity growth can be identified at an aggregate level, explaining as much as one third of the aggregate growth of output. But this TFP growth was...

Total factor productivity growth is studied in this paper for two countries, Thailand and Indonesia, from 1980 to 2006. The analysis is conducted at both the aggregate and sectoral levels. A feature of the analysis is the decomposition of aggregate total factor productivity growth into two...

This paper examines the impact that publicly funded agricultural research has on productivity in crop production within Thailand. It tests empirically the two hypotheses that, first, publicly funded research and development (R&D) in crop production is a significant determinant of total factor...

This paper argues that recent increases in international food prices worsened poverty incidence in Indonesia, even though many poor farmers benefited. This conclusion is based on the application of a multi-sectoral, multihousehold general equilibrium model of the Indonesian economy. The positive...

Over recent decades, most of the developing economies of Asia achieved reductions in absolute poverty incidence, but these reductions varied greatly in size. Differences in the rate of aggregate economic growth explain part, but not all of these differences. One factor that would be important is...

A concern about large, export-oriented projects relates to the flows of foreign exchange into the domestic economy that they produce. These flows occur both during the investment phase of the project and subsequently during its operational phase, through export earnings. Foreign exchange inflows...