Endowments, Location or Luck? Evaluating the Determinants of Sub-National Growth in Decentralized Indonesia

McCulloch, Neil ; Sjahrir, Bambang Suharnoko

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: AGRICULTURE;    ANNUAL GROWTH;    ANNUAL GROWTH RATE;    AVERAGE ANNUAL;    AVERAGE ANNUAL GROWTH;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4769
RP-ID  :  WPS4769

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Indonesia's "big bang"decentralization in 2001 shifted much of the responsibilityfor local economic development from central government todistrict and city governments, which today number more than450.But the performance of these districts has variedwidely.This paper attempts to understand the determinantsof sub-national (district/city) growth in Indonesia and maphow these determinants have changed since before the 1997/98economic crisis.The authors exploit a rich dataset thatincludes a wide range of district-level characteristics,including education, population, cultural, economic, andinfrastructure variables, as well as a set of variablesrelating to distance, to try to explain growth.Theanalysis finds that, after accounting for differences inother variables, poorer districts tend to grow faster thanbetter off districts.Similarly, there is evidence ofspatial divergence, in the sense that districts tend to growfaster if their neighbors are growing quickly.However, thequality of the existing district-level data makes itdifficult to identify whether endowments or factors relatedto distance are systematically associated with growth.