Table of contents:
- 00:00-00:13, Opening
- 00:13-03:20, On the road
- 03:21-05:21, Yay, arrived!
- 05:22-07:20, Slide show 1
- 07:20-09:10, The peak Sunday
- 09:10-end, Slide show 2
Selasa, 05 Juli 2011
Rocklahoma 2011
It is a personal rockumentary on my trip to Rocklahoma 2011.
Table of contents:
Table of contents:
Happy Fourth
Personal video documentation on the Happy Fourth 2011.
TOC:
TOC:
- 00:00-00:03, Opening
- 00:03-00:50, Free kids
- 00:50-01:07, We the people
- 01:17-03:27, Parade
- 03:27-03:59, Fireworks picnic
- 03:59-04:58, JIMI HENDRIX !
- 04:58-08:50, the Fireworks ! (video)
- 08:50-09:16, Credit
Senin, 02 Mei 2011
Rokenrol Trip: Fantasy vs Reality
Salah satu fantasi masa remaja saya adalah mengendari Shelby Mustang 1966 GT 350 sendirian dari Pantai Timur sampai Pantai Barat Amerika. Musik rock digeber keras sepanjang perjalanan. Menyusuri Rute 66 yang legendaris, melewati kota-kota kecil yang hampir mati. Mampir ke klub-klub musik blues, berharap bertemu titisan Robert Johnson atau Stevie Ray Vaughn. Jalan malam menembus padang pasir atau badlands.
Seringkali ditengah kelas, alih-alih menyalin isi papan tulis, saya lebih sibuk membongkar-pasang playlist yang akan menemani "perjalanan spiritual" ini (seakan-akan berangkat minggu depan haha...). Night Ranger's (You Can Still) Rock In America, Def Leppard's Hello America, Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song, Jimi Hendrix's Hear My Train Comin', Procol Harum's Whisky Train, Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode, dan David Lee Roth's Tobacoo Road termasuk dalam daftar teratas.
Karena menginjak Amerika baru kesampaian setelah dewasa dan berkeluarga, maka fantasi itu perlu dimodifikasi. Nevertheless, it still rocks too! (Disergap hujan badai di London, OH, mampir ke Cleveland's Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame, dan ditutup di Chicago's Lollapalooza 2010 sebelum pulang ke Urbana).
Dokumentasi video perjalanan juga dapat dilihat di Youtube.
Seringkali ditengah kelas, alih-alih menyalin isi papan tulis, saya lebih sibuk membongkar-pasang playlist yang akan menemani "perjalanan spiritual" ini (seakan-akan berangkat minggu depan haha...). Night Ranger's (You Can Still) Rock In America, Def Leppard's Hello America, Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song, Jimi Hendrix's Hear My Train Comin', Procol Harum's Whisky Train, Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode, dan David Lee Roth's Tobacoo Road termasuk dalam daftar teratas.
Karena menginjak Amerika baru kesampaian setelah dewasa dan berkeluarga, maka fantasi itu perlu dimodifikasi. Nevertheless, it still rocks too! (Disergap hujan badai di London, OH, mampir ke Cleveland's Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame, dan ditutup di Chicago's Lollapalooza 2010 sebelum pulang ke Urbana).
Dokumentasi video perjalanan juga dapat dilihat di Youtube.
Minggu, 01 Mei 2011
My Homes
Home goes beyond a geographical concept. To me it's a state of mind, so I'm happy to call Surabaya and Champaign-Urbana as my homes.
Beatles defines home as a sanctuary from a hectic day 'cause you'll see the loved ones. Home is where you sense a peaceful and beautiful moment, right goes straight to your heart as you're listening to Vito Bratta's finest solo. Home is sweet, cause you know you won't be left all alone.
Beatles defines home as a sanctuary from a hectic day 'cause you'll see the loved ones. Home is where you sense a peaceful and beautiful moment, right goes straight to your heart as you're listening to Vito Bratta's finest solo. Home is sweet, cause you know you won't be left all alone.
The Curse of Education
Despite a long time Education for All movement, we can observe many inequalities in education or education-induced inequality. Underachievement in education is one of the most potent factors in transmitting poverty across generation. Low income groups have high drop out rates and lower progression from primary to secondary education. Differences in educational attainment, allied to wider social and cultural factors, help explain male-female income gaps in many economies.
Social scientists have long observed the "curse of education". Here is some important linkages:
Education, inequality, poverty-The educational system in many developing countries act to increase rather than decrease income inequalities because:
Social scientists have long observed the "curse of education". Here is some important linkages:
Education, inequality, poverty-The educational system in many developing countries act to increase rather than decrease income inequalities because:
- There is positive correlation between education and income.
- The poor are effectively denied access to secondary and higher education because of higher cost (mainly opportunity cost) lower benefit (more difficult to get high pay jobs in urban areas due to lack of connection). So rate of dropouts much higher for the poor.
- Family environment, peer group interaction, and early malnutrition and poor health all work to the disadvantage of poor students in learning.
- Curricula have strong urban bias and pay little attention to priority needs of majority of student who live and work in rural areas.
- The wholesale import of formal educational system from developed countries into developing countries contributes not only to external brain drain (migration to developed countries) but also to internal brain drain (diverting attention of professionals from local problems and needs).
Hardiknas 2 Mei 2011
Hari ini ber-solilokui Hymne Guru (ah, mataku membasah).
Apa kabar Wajib Belajar Indonesia?Sebagian jawaban dapat ditemukan disini:
Apa kabar Wajib Belajar Indonesia?
- Barro & Lee. Datanya kaya, bisa dipakai sekedar untuk perbandingan snapshot maupun melihat lebih jauh bagaimana kontribusi modal manusia terhadap kinerja ekonomi.
- Statistik pendidikan UNESCO maupun indikator pembangunan manusia UNDP.
Senin, 21 April 2008
Convergence or Divergence?
(This writing is an Abstract and Conclusion part of my conference paper, presented in the 8th International Conference of IRSA/Indonesian Regional Science Association and the 31st Annual Meeting and Conference of FAEA/Federation of Asian Economic Association. Both were in 2007).
Abstract
This paper studies convergence process across cities in East Java province of Indonesia. To do so, it particularly investigates the effects of human capital and public capital on convergence trend. It also explores the geographic dimension of knowledge spillovers that is perceived as a key mechanism for convergence and a particular pattern of economic (industrial) activities. This paper provides some evidence on the trend of economic divergence. During the study period, divergence trend was associated with both economic liberalisation and decentralisation, while convergence trend shortly existed during economic crisis. Further, the process of convergence is conditional. The effectiveness of policy interventions that may be able to enhance convergence is also discussed in this paper.
Main Points
This paper provides some evidence on the trend of economic divergence. During the study period, divergence trend was associated with both economic liberalisation and decentralisation, while convergence trend shortly existed during economic crisis. Further, the process of convergence is conditional. Conditional convergence is basically equivalent to sustained differences in the levels of city real output or income per capita, as evidenced by estimates with LSDV model, as supported with spatial regression model, and as implied with the pattern of concentration and specialisation. While it is true that there is some degree of (global) spatial autocorrelation, it is not strong enough to leak out some growth - enhancing spillover effects, such as knowledge spillovers. Thus, knowledge that is important to improve productivity (that eventually leads to higher growth rate) will only be contained in some clustering cities which are already rich and densely populated, providing higher degree of proximity among economic agents and facilitating knowledge externalities. Analysis on industrial concentration and cities’ specialization suggests that large geographical concentration of manufacturing employment has remained and convergence will therefore be conditional.
Is there any means to soften concentration to promote convergence? Improving infrastructure in East Java’s periphery cities is often suggested as one of policy measures. However, whether the outcome of improved infrastructure will promote spatial diffusion or, instead, enhance concentration is not clear, as there exists two conflicting forces at work. As infrastructure is improved, foreign firms which exercise a relatively large export share in comparison to domestic firms will more focus on cheap production possibilities. This behaviour will have a positive effect on spatial diffusion. Yet, even among foreign owned firms is it only in a few manufacturing sectors that the bulk of the production is exported. Thus, it seems reasonable to expect that the effect from improved infrastructure will be ambiguous and not necessarily reduce concentration (Sjöholm, (…), unpublished). In line with that notion, a variable of public capital used in this paper, utilised as a proxy for infrastructure, shows negative or non-significant relationship with convergence process (see table 2 for unconditional convergence and table 3 for conditional convergence). One interpretation can be derived from these results is that the spending of public capital (on infrastructure) is not cost effective, suffering from poor design and planning, mark-up, and corruption.
Though the role of human capital in this study proved to be convergence enhancing, I think that politicians and public officials tend to prefer infrastructure to human capital projects, as the former more fits their political or financial interests. As development strategy, from political perspective, infrastructure projects better fit five years of political cycle. Infrastructure projects take shorter time and are more visible, which are politically useful for boosting the chance of being (re)elected. Thus, more balanced development strategy between infrastructure and human capital projects is certainly a sensible policy option to reduce concentration and to promote convergence.
Under regional autonomy regime at city level that has been just implemented in Indonesia for about four years, city governments in East Java province are likely tempted to pursue some sorts of territorial competition policyto affect firms’ location decisions, while at the same time, less efforts are devoted in developing other local development strategies. Imbalanced economic performance will be augmented with imbalanced local development strategy by each city governments. Both literature and empirical works warn that such a policy option may be unnecessary or, worse, act as a strategy of waste (e.g. Cheshire and Gordon, 1996; Cheshire and Gordon, 1998; Rodríguez-Pose and Arbix, 2001). Considering that East Java province has long been one of the Indonesia’s main destinations of manufacturing activities (Mackie, 1993) and the spatial patterns as observed in this study, such a territorial competition policy, especially the poorly designed one, may be unnecessary for ‘core’ cities along Surabaya-Malang corridor. As a worse case, it may bring financial and technical burdens for ‘periphery’ cities. Thus, for city governments, this study should shed a light that a policy of ‘doing nothing’ with regard to East Java industrial agglomeration economies should be regarded as, if not the best policy, one of the sensible policy alternatives.
Some places benefit from structures created in the past, through a cumulative process, which has led to agglomeration economies. Hence, a pessimistic opinion about the relevance of policies attempting to reduce disparities between locations is a consequence of the analysis. If history plays such an important role, concentration of economic activity in places where agglomeration has been a product of a long time period seems inevitable. Furthermore, does there exist a cumulative process through history, policies cannot affect much density and thus productivity (Irawan and Allegria, 2006).
However, it does not mean that a policy of ‘doing something’ to promote human capital, local firms, and business environment are not encouraged. Discussing the paper by Ciccone and Hall (1996), Irawan and Allegria (2006) suggest that attempts of local and regional governments in order to increase productivity should be conducted to increase density. If concentration and proximity of workers is important, development of employment clusters or improvements of the city business centre are relevant to obtain productivity gains. In addition, policies satisfying the demand as well as reducing the price of commuting and the costs of doing business should contribute to the recreation of employment, reinforcing business and workers concentration, and agglomeration economies. At this point, the differences of underlying condition for convergence can be gradually reduced. Therefore, ‘the membership’ of convergence club can be expected to slowly expand.
Abstract
This paper studies convergence process across cities in East Java province of Indonesia. To do so, it particularly investigates the effects of human capital and public capital on convergence trend. It also explores the geographic dimension of knowledge spillovers that is perceived as a key mechanism for convergence and a particular pattern of economic (industrial) activities. This paper provides some evidence on the trend of economic divergence. During the study period, divergence trend was associated with both economic liberalisation and decentralisation, while convergence trend shortly existed during economic crisis. Further, the process of convergence is conditional. The effectiveness of policy interventions that may be able to enhance convergence is also discussed in this paper.
Main Points
This paper provides some evidence on the trend of economic divergence. During the study period, divergence trend was associated with both economic liberalisation and decentralisation, while convergence trend shortly existed during economic crisis. Further, the process of convergence is conditional. Conditional convergence is basically equivalent to sustained differences in the levels of city real output or income per capita, as evidenced by estimates with LSDV model, as supported with spatial regression model, and as implied with the pattern of concentration and specialisation. While it is true that there is some degree of (global) spatial autocorrelation, it is not strong enough to leak out some growth - enhancing spillover effects, such as knowledge spillovers. Thus, knowledge that is important to improve productivity (that eventually leads to higher growth rate) will only be contained in some clustering cities which are already rich and densely populated, providing higher degree of proximity among economic agents and facilitating knowledge externalities. Analysis on industrial concentration and cities’ specialization suggests that large geographical concentration of manufacturing employment has remained and convergence will therefore be conditional.
Is there any means to soften concentration to promote convergence? Improving infrastructure in East Java’s periphery cities is often suggested as one of policy measures. However, whether the outcome of improved infrastructure will promote spatial diffusion or, instead, enhance concentration is not clear, as there exists two conflicting forces at work. As infrastructure is improved, foreign firms which exercise a relatively large export share in comparison to domestic firms will more focus on cheap production possibilities. This behaviour will have a positive effect on spatial diffusion. Yet, even among foreign owned firms is it only in a few manufacturing sectors that the bulk of the production is exported. Thus, it seems reasonable to expect that the effect from improved infrastructure will be ambiguous and not necessarily reduce concentration (Sjöholm, (…), unpublished). In line with that notion, a variable of public capital used in this paper, utilised as a proxy for infrastructure, shows negative or non-significant relationship with convergence process (see table 2 for unconditional convergence and table 3 for conditional convergence). One interpretation can be derived from these results is that the spending of public capital (on infrastructure) is not cost effective, suffering from poor design and planning, mark-up, and corruption.
Though the role of human capital in this study proved to be convergence enhancing, I think that politicians and public officials tend to prefer infrastructure to human capital projects, as the former more fits their political or financial interests. As development strategy, from political perspective, infrastructure projects better fit five years of political cycle. Infrastructure projects take shorter time and are more visible, which are politically useful for boosting the chance of being (re)elected. Thus, more balanced development strategy between infrastructure and human capital projects is certainly a sensible policy option to reduce concentration and to promote convergence.
Under regional autonomy regime at city level that has been just implemented in Indonesia for about four years, city governments in East Java province are likely tempted to pursue some sorts of territorial competition policyto affect firms’ location decisions, while at the same time, less efforts are devoted in developing other local development strategies. Imbalanced economic performance will be augmented with imbalanced local development strategy by each city governments. Both literature and empirical works warn that such a policy option may be unnecessary or, worse, act as a strategy of waste (e.g. Cheshire and Gordon, 1996; Cheshire and Gordon, 1998; Rodríguez-Pose and Arbix, 2001). Considering that East Java province has long been one of the Indonesia’s main destinations of manufacturing activities (Mackie, 1993) and the spatial patterns as observed in this study, such a territorial competition policy, especially the poorly designed one, may be unnecessary for ‘core’ cities along Surabaya-Malang corridor. As a worse case, it may bring financial and technical burdens for ‘periphery’ cities. Thus, for city governments, this study should shed a light that a policy of ‘doing nothing’ with regard to East Java industrial agglomeration economies should be regarded as, if not the best policy, one of the sensible policy alternatives.
Some places benefit from structures created in the past, through a cumulative process, which has led to agglomeration economies. Hence, a pessimistic opinion about the relevance of policies attempting to reduce disparities between locations is a consequence of the analysis. If history plays such an important role, concentration of economic activity in places where agglomeration has been a product of a long time period seems inevitable. Furthermore, does there exist a cumulative process through history, policies cannot affect much density and thus productivity (Irawan and Allegria, 2006).
However, it does not mean that a policy of ‘doing something’ to promote human capital, local firms, and business environment are not encouraged. Discussing the paper by Ciccone and Hall (1996), Irawan and Allegria (2006) suggest that attempts of local and regional governments in order to increase productivity should be conducted to increase density. If concentration and proximity of workers is important, development of employment clusters or improvements of the city business centre are relevant to obtain productivity gains. In addition, policies satisfying the demand as well as reducing the price of commuting and the costs of doing business should contribute to the recreation of employment, reinforcing business and workers concentration, and agglomeration economies. At this point, the differences of underlying condition for convergence can be gradually reduced. Therefore, ‘the membership’ of convergence club can be expected to slowly expand.
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