Urban development patterns in Indonesia

The author examines recent urban development in Indonesia. "Analysis of urban developments in Indonesia has been hampered in the past by weak data. Recently, the National Urban Development Strategy (NUDS) project has generated a set of improved data. This paper aims at elaborating and supplementing the NUDS study. After a discussion of definitional problems, an analysis is carried out of urban growth rates at the provincial level. Private investment is shown to be a principal determinant of urban growth rates. Other significant determinants are rural immigration and the present level of urbanisation. Private investment is shown to be strongly biased towards provinces with large urban areas. In addition, polarisation is studied at the level of individual cities. It is found that a period of rapidly increasing polarisation has come to an end during the last decade."     

Trade reorientation and recovery in transition economies

How do we define transition and when can we say that transitionto a market economy is complete? Here we suggest that one wayof addressing this issue is to analyse current economic dataand ask whether, in ignorance of the past, we can identify countriesin central and eastern Europe as being somehow different fromcomparable western market economies. In this paper we focuson international trade and argue that several indicators, suchas the geographical structure of trade and the undervaluationof the exchange rate, cannot distinguish the more advanced countriesin central and eastern Europe. We also seek to explain how thereorientation of trade towards the West has been achieved and,in particular, assess whether improvements on design and qualityare a prerequisite for export expansion.