The textile and clothing industry is an important sector because of its contribution to the economy. It becomes an important industry which absorbs most workers, especially in the low labor-cost countries. The United States (U.S.) is the biggest market for textile and clothing products worldwide. Distorted by some protections, the trend in the U.S. textile and clothing market changes rapidly. One of the most influential agreements was The Multi-Fiber Agreement (MFA) with its quota restriction from 1974 to 1994. After the end of MFA, The Agreement on Textile and Clothing (ATC) toke into effect. This agreement set by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to eliminate the quota restriction gradually within 10 years (1995-2005) and use the tariff restriction. After the end of the ATC, the trade in textile and clothing becomes governed by the general rules and the multilateral trading system. Meanwhile, the tariff still becomes a burden for some countries, especially the ones which do not get a special tariff rate because of the lack of trade agreement with the U.S. Another challenge is the use of imported raw materials as the main input of production. This makes the cost of production sensitive to international price volatility. According to […]

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Women’s representation in Indonesia like many other countries in the world, remain considerably low. Therefore, both women activists and the government have been trying to increase women’s descriptive representation in order to increase their substantive representation, since it has been argued that females as lawmakers are more concerned about well-being issues. This paper focuses on the impacts of the descriptive representation of women in local politics. It examines the impacts of having more female in politics on the proportions of budget allocation in the municipalities budget by using data from municipalities in Indonesia between 2010 and 2017. This study also observes the gender effect on policies related to infrastructure access which women, as homemakers, strongly care about, namely household access to safe water, safe sanitation and electricity. The results indicate that the gender of a politician matters in terms of the policy outcomes. Women in the Regional House of Representatives are more likely to increase the budgets for environment, housing and public facility and health, but reduce the proportions allocated for economy and education. Likewise, a female leader is a statistically significant factor in the allocation of more government spending on health, but reduces funding for education. In terms of […]

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This paper aims to explore communities’ contribution toward and identify the factors affecting the availability of sanitation facilities. Sanitation has an important role in human life because it correlates with the fulfillment of basic human needs such as wastewater and solid waste management. This research employed two models as follows: First, the hedonic price model was used to estimate the willingness to pay for improved sanitation facilities. Second, it also utilizes the logistic model to understand the correlation between socio-economic characteristics and availability of improved sanitation facilities. Using the fifth wave of Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS) data, the results show that the availability of toilet with septic tank influences the value of the property in urban areas. Hence, people living in urban areas are willing to pay more for facilities. Moreover, the awareness of people in urban and rural areas affect their willingness to pay (WTP) for appropriate garbage handling. However, drainage facilities do not significantly influence the value of the property in urban and rural areas. Related with the presence of improved sanitation facilities, socio-economic characteristics such as education level and residential area influence in Indonesia compared to other characteristics. Download

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The main objective of this research is to examine the effect of government expenditures on the transportation sector and that effect on economic growth in Indonesia from 1986 to 2016. The research employed long time series data, utilizing the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression method to analyze the data collected. The data analyzed show that government expenditures on transportation as a physical capital and government expenditures on education as human capital significantly affect economic growth in Indonesia. On the contrary, the expenditures on housing and health indicated no contribution for national economic activity. This study recommended that government must ensure the budget for transportation development. The government must pay more attention to the allocation of the education budget for regions outside Java, by building educational facilities in areas that are still in the poor category that will improve their standard of living. Lastly, government should pay more attention to bureaucratic system specifically the procurement of goods and services and give punishment to those who divert and embezzle public funds. Download

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