The Role of Health Insurance Membership in Health Service Utilisation in Indonesia

In 2014, Indonesia implemented a new, nationwide, subsidised universal-coverage health insurance program, under which poor Indonesians do not pay to become members and others pay a relatively low fee. This program has created a national debate about the effectiveness of the ownership of health insurance in increasing the use of health services—particularly among the poor—given the limitations in their quantity and quality. Using membership data on different health insurance programs from the 2007 rounds of Susenas and Riskesdas, this article researches the impact of having health insurance on health service utilisation, by controlling the levels of quality and quantity of health services in the area. We argue that having health insurance increases health service utilisation by approximately eight percentage points when people feel sick (or by approximately five percentage points if we include those who do not feel sick).     

Integrating accounting and statistics: Forecasting,budgeting and production planning at the American Telephone and Telegraph Company during the 1920s

Drawing on the scholarly perspectives of James R. Beniger and Alfred D. Chandler, we examine a long‐term process of firm‐specific learning at the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). Extensive archival records reveal the firm's efforts to improve its informational resources for market planning, capital budgeting and production scheduling in the 1920s. These initiatives were meant to minimise the likelihood of a repetition of the financial crisis that nearly drove AT&T into bankruptcy in 1906–07. The informational innovation was costly as it required specialised human capital, the identification of suitable metrics corresponding to underlying business processes and the integration of these metrics within the elements of a complex firm. Such a transformation developed more reliable forecasting of future demand for telecommunication services. Central to this process was the adaptation of new econometric methodologies for predicting business cycle fluctuations and the integration of these findings into operational plans. Reforms of this sort helped to quantify risk and reduce internal asymmetries that threatened to undermine the smooth, integrative management of AT&T's corporate headquarters unit, its regional operating subsidiaries and Western Electric, its captive manufacturing arm. Our study contributes to a deeper understanding of the historical evolution of management accounting by studying firm‐specific learning to combat external uncertainties and internal information asymmetries in the coordination and control of a giant business enterprise.     

Revisiting the Impact of Consumption Growth and Inequality on Poverty in Indonesia during Decentralisation

This article analyses the consumption growth elasticity and inequality elasticity of poverty in Indonesia, with a particular focus on the decentralisation period. Using provincial panel data, we show that the effectiveness of growth in alleviating poverty across provinces was greater during decentralisation—that is, between 2002 and 2010—than at any other point since 1984. The growth elasticity of poverty since 2002 is estimated to have been –2.46, which means that a 10% increase in average consumption per capita would have reduced the poverty rate by almost 25%. However, we also find that rising income inequality negated a quarter to a third of the 5.7-percentage-point reduction in the headcount poverty rate. This increasing inequality has contributed to a lower level of pro-poor growth than that maintained in Indonesia before decentralisation.     

Poverty in Indonesia 1984–2002: the impact of growth and changes in inequality

This paper examines the growth elasticity of poverty across three development episodes in Indonesia between 1984 and 2002, after controlling for inequality. It relies on estimation of panel data from the National Socio-Economic Survey conducted by the central statistics agency. Contrary to expectations, the growth elasticity of poverty was virtually indistinguishable across the three development episodes – a period of far-reaching policy liberalisation (1984–90); a second period of slower liberalisation (1990–96); and the period of recovery from the Asian financial crisis (1999–2002). Growth was pro-poor in all three periods, while the impact of growth on poverty was either augmented or offset by changes in inequality, depending on the period. Only during the first liberalisation period did a reduction in inequality serve to augment the impact of growth on poverty.     

Louis D. Brandeis and standard cost accounting: A study of the construction of historical agency

During a 1910 Interstate Commerce Commission hearing Louis D. Brandeis argued that U.S. railroads could save a million dollars a day if they introduced scientific management (in particular, standard costing) into their operations. Brandeis' claim received widespread press attention and helped set into motion four years of public preoccupation with the ideas of efficiency. In this paper we examine the construction of Brandeis' agency and note that Brandeis' extensive publicity campaign on behalf of scientific management provided significant impetus to the spread of standard costing.     

Global Knowledge Transfer and Telecommunications: The Bell System in Japan, 1945-1952

This study evaluates the Bell System's role in the revival ofJapanese telecommunications during the post-World War II occupation.Civilian and military personnel who had worked for the firmand who served in the Civil Communications Service (CCS) ofthe Supreme Command Allied Powers represented the primary agentsfor knowledge transfer to Japan's Ministry of Communications(MOC) and its supporting independent equipment manufacturers.The MOC became a channel for communicating ideas about managementpractices at the Bell System to the local telecommunicationsindustry. The CCS's actions in Japan represent what Alfred D.Chandler has termed the "integrated learning base" in actionin the public sector. The CCS's role in knowledge transfer hasbeen underestimated by many scholars who have focused primarilyon its contributions to promoting production and quality engineeringin telecommunications manufacturing. Its central achievementwas laying the managerial groundwork for the establishment in1952 of the governmental enterprise Nippon Telegraph and Telephone.