Kids, get up! Traffic is bad out there.

Jakarta's deputy governor Prijanto thinks he can solve Jakarta's traffic problem by not tackling the problem. Instead, he will apply his draconian power to force your kids wake up early and be at schools at 6:30 in the morning. And he won't stop there. He will also force private offices in North and Central Jakarta to start at 7:30am, West 8am and East 9am. (So be very prepared. If your office is right on the border of North and East Jakarta, make sure the meeting room does not share the line! If you work in Central Jakarta and needs to call your colleague in the East first thing in the morning, just hold up; have some coffee and play some game instead until 9).

The deputy governor of course defends his silly idea. Quoted by The Jakarta Post today (25/11/2008), he says "How can people say it won't be effective when we haven't even run the program yet?". Yes, Mr. Deputy. How can people say eating dirt is not good when they haven't even tasted it?

Mr. Deputy also doesn't care with kids' rights: "I heard that some also said that the new regulation was against children's rights. Well, just look at the positive side. Getting up early will make children fresher than before". You're damn right, Pak. In fact, adults need that too. So why not force the lazy civil servants to start at 5am?

Prijanto, you're unbelievable.

Yoga, anyone?

I'm totally speechless.

A development practitioner's diary #2: what room do we have?

Recently I have been involved in a multidonor-funded sanitation project in East Java, in addition to my ongoing donor-related work, which has been more analytical. There are many non-technical issues that I think are too important to miss. In real world, those non-technical issuses are important, sometimes very important, for the success or failure of a research or an intervention program. I am going to share some of the experience in this 'Field diary' series. Earlier I have shared a first story; hence this post is the second one... (a.p.).

My friend -- that dumbfounded psychologist in Australia -- and I were chatting about the sanitation project. We talked about the background and objectives of the study, and how the intervention will (or is expected) to work. After exchanging several lines, he raised an important point. Here's an excerpt of the conversation.

DP: "Do you know what makes the villagers don't build their own toilets?

AP: "They said they don't have money. But looks that it's not the case as they can afford to buy cellphones, and some of the houses have ceramic floors or permanent walls. So looks like cultural aspects or lack of information matter."

DP: "Does the project try to find out what is the main reason for not having toilets?"

AP: "No -- the intervention aims to create or trigger demand for proper sanitation."

DP: "But how do you know that intervention works if you don't find out the real reason first?"

AP: "I'll tell you what. This is a development project, not a pure academic research... If you know what I mean, or try to read between the lines..."

DP: "Ah yes, got it... I should have thought more pragmatically...."

Moral of the story: in most cases, if we're running a development project, the constraints for what activities to do or what information to look for have already been set. Although sometimes we can play around with the constraints, or piggyback with an existing project, to do other activities or look for other information. I'll tell you in other posts.

CPO Price Dictator (If Any)

Khudori, in his op-ed in Kompas, lamented that:

We are indeed the world largest CPO exporter, but the price of Indonesian CPO has been dictated by Rotterdam spot market and Kuala Lumpur future market.

and he concluded

Last, as second largest CPO producer after Malaysia, Indonesia should be taking important role in the searching and making of product's price, not dictated by others.

Well, of course the equilibrium price is determined by not only supply (where Indonesia belongs to), but also demand (the rest of the world whose growth has been slumped). And how are you gonna "take a role" in making up the price? Reducing the CPO production, or setting up a cartel with Malaysia? It might not work either, since, perhaps, there are numerous substitute for CPO. I don't know.

By the way, does anyone know how much does the palm cooking oil price in Jakarta cost lately? Palm cooking oil consumer may not be happy, if you cut the CPO production.

Now which one is which?

We're INTP?

According to Typealyzer, we here are:

The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

Ah, psychologists are amazing!

Not Tariff, but Subsidy and Bailout

Dede of Diskusi Ekonomi is apparently more optimistic than I on recent G20 meeting. Take international trade issue, he wrote that one of the important meeting's results was the agreement for not to adopt protectionism. Here is the official statement #13:

We underscore the critical importance of rejecting protectionism and not turning inward in times of financial uncertainty. In this regard, within the next 12 months, we will refrain from raising new barriers to investment or to trade in goods and services, imposing new export restrictions, or implementing World Trade Organization (WTO) inconsistent measures to stimulate exports.

This is surely a good policy. But the problem is whether the governments are effectively able to do that against own domestic political pressure? While they might not raise the tariff, which is a blatant WTO violation, it seems that the more subtle subsidies and bailouts are now gaining popularity --which is just another kind of protectionism. The US, for instance, now debated on whether or not to save those inefficient Detroit's big boys.

Dear Kate: Monthly or daily?

Dear Kate,

I'm a driver. My monthly pay is Rp 650,000. On top of that I get Rp 30,000 per day, "day" being defined as 7am to 7pm. Finally for each additional hour beyond that the boss pays me Rp 5,000. Occasionally, if I work at weekend, the daily rate becomes Rp 50,000 and hourly rate Rp 7,500. Don't ask me why this sounds so complicated. Ask the boss. What I know is that on average I get paid about Rp 1.5 million. I think that's because almost everyday my boss takes off late from office -- extra hourly pay for me.

Recently my boss offered me a raise. He asked me to choose between a Rp 100,000 raise on the monthly pay and Rp 5,000 raise on the daily pay. Any advice?

Thanks,
Complicated Driver @ Ciganjur



Dear Complicated Driver,

Mathematically they are the same. Both will end up a Rp 100,000 additional per month, assuming your boss works 5 days a week and stays home or drives himself on weekends. But if your boss is a workaholic and frequently asks you to drive him on weekends, than take the second offer. In contrast, you would take the first offer if the boss travels abroad frequently. Finally, if your boss' working behavior is quite random, definitely you should take the monthly based adjustment.

Kate
p/s I think I understand why he made it that complicated. Just ask yourself: do you like to shirk or not?

Dear Kate: What's the fair job division?

Dear Kate,

I'm a working mother with two naughty boys (2 and 1 year old). We hire two babysitters to take care of them (one for each). Recently our helper took off for mudik and never came back. So I have decided to extend the tasks of the nannies to include washing and ironing the boys' clothes -- of course with a good additional monthly pay. I've heard that economists always suggest division of labor. Any advice? Thanks. Busy Mother @ Depok.

Dear Busy Mother @ Depok,

Assign Nanny A for washing and Nanny B for ironing. Then reverse that on monthly basis. If only one nanny do both washing and ironing, the other one would have no incentive to limit the number of clothes coming into the laundry basket. Suppose for example that both tasks fall to Nanny A, Boy 1's babysitter. Because Nanny A would know full well how inconvenient washing and ironing are, she would be very concious that her boy doesn't play with too much dirt. That way, the number of dirty clothes can be minimized. But that's not the case of Nanny B. Imagine this. Every time Boy 2 spits on his cloth, no matter how small, Nanny B will just take it off, throw it into the basket then get a new, clean one. Worse yet, she would have less incentive to teach Boy 2 about living clean. Now, if you give her responsibility to iron the dry clothes, she would think twice. After all, she wants less clothes to iron later in the evening. Kate.

These things do happen...

You have carefully calculated your sample size based on some criteria (power calculation, impact size, budget, etc.). You have randomly assigned your samples into treatment and control groups. Your counterpart, in this case District governments, have agreed to commit to the random assignment.

Then, one morning, your local government contact called you:

How are you? Been a while since the last time we talked. By the way, sorry to inform you, but we have decided to give treatment to village X. I know, initially it was a control village. But we thought that the village is in a desperate need to get treatment. So, in fact, we have already started treating village X.

And this was not the first time you received that kind of surprise phone call. And out there, many still believe that a big donor like the Bank is a kind of super institution that is able to dictate governments here and there to get what it wants.

Note: anyway, in randomized trial, there are ways to deal with this; you can choose to apply the Intention to Treat analysis, or the Treatment of the Treated.

A Place for Inspiration

Tim Harford wrote about Avinash Dixit, who

"...once told young economists that a good place to have ideas was in front of the shaving mirror. Krugman has a beard. Imagine, quipped Dixit, how much he could have achieved if he shaved!..".

My good place to think about good ideas is under the shower's overhead nozzle. And you will know that you lead toward right direction for your ideas when you start to use shampoo to wash your body without even realize it.