IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pas/papers/2008-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Soeharto Era: From Beginning to End

Author

Listed:
  • Ross H Mcledo

Abstract

The paper develops a simple model of the Soeharto 'franchise', in which the coercive power of government was deployed in the interests of the president, his family, his business cronies and key officials within the franchise. The franchise prospered by generating rents that could be harvested by, and shared with, insider firms, and by extorting payments from outsider firms and individuals. In this model the franchise inevitably collapses in the long run for various reasons: the level of 'private taxation' from which it prospers eventually becomes intolerable; rents are diluted as franchise membership is expanded to buy off opposition; insider firms grow so rapidly that they run into financial and management bottlenecks; internal discipline declines as members compete for larger shares of the rents. The float of the Thai baht in 1997 merely provided the trigger for this inevitable collapse, while Soeharto's failing health helped to accelerate it.

Suggested Citation

  • Ross H Mcledo, 2008. "The Soeharto Era: From Beginning to End," Departmental Working Papers 2008-03, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:pas:papers:2008-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://crawford.anu.edu.au/acde/publications/publish/papers/wp2008/wp_econ_2008_03.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Cole & Betty Slade, 1998. "Why Has Indonesia's Financial Crisis Been so Bad?," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(2), pages 61-66.
    2. Ross Mcleod, 2005. "The struggle to regain effective government under democracy in Indonesia," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(3), pages 367-386.
    3. Ross McLeod, 1997. "Survey of Recent Developments," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(1), pages 3-43.
    4. Ross McLeod, 2003. "Towards improved monetary policy in Indonesia," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(3), pages 303-324.
    5. Krueger, Anne O, 1974. "The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(3), pages 291-303, June.
    6. Ross Mcleod, 2006. "Indonesia's new deposit guarantee law," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(1), pages 59-78.
    7. W. Max Corden, 2007. "The Asian Crisis: a Perspective after Ten Years," Departmental Working Papers 2007-06, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    8. George Fane & Ross H.McLeod, 2002. "Banking Collapse and Restructuring in Indonesia, 1997-2001," Cato Journal, Cato Journal, Cato Institute, vol. 22(2), pages 277-295, Fall.
    9. Ross McLeod, 2004. "Dealing with bank system failure: Indonesia, 1997-2003," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(1), pages 95-116.
    10. Richard A. Posner, 1974. "Theories of Economic Regulation," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 5(2), pages 335-358, Autumn.
    11. Ross Mcleod, 2005. "Survey of recent developments," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(2), pages 133-157.
    12. Ross H. McLeod, 1998. "From Crisis to Cataclysm? The Mismanagement of Indonesia’s Economic Ailments," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(7), pages 913-930, September.
    13. Olivier Frecaut, 2004. "Indonesia's banking crisis: a new perspective on $50 billion of losses," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(1), pages 37-57.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nys, Emmanuelle & Tarazi, Amine & Trinugroho, Irwan, 2015. "Political connections, bank deposits, and formal deposit insurance," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 19(C), pages 83-104.
    2. Emmanuelle Nys & Amine Tarazi & Irwan Trinugroho, 2013. "Political Connections, Bank Deposits, and Formal Deposit Insurance: Evidence from an Emerging Economy," Working Papers hal-00916513, HAL.
    3. Hal Hill, 2018. "Asia's Third Giant: A Survey of the Indonesian Economy," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 94(307), pages 469-499, December.
    4. Stephen Grenville, 2004. "What sort of financial sector should Indonesia have?," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(3), pages 307-327.
    5. Ross H. McLeod, 2014. "The ill-fated currency board proposal for Indonesia," Departmental Working Papers 2014-02, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    6. Lloyd Kenward, 1999. "Assessing Vulnerability to Financial Crisis: Evidence from Indonesia," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(3), pages 71-95.
    7. Matthew D. Mitchell, 2019. "Uncontestable favoritism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 181(1), pages 167-190, October.
    8. Lawrence J. White, "undated". "Technological Change, Financial Innovation, and Financial Regulation: The Challenges for Public Policy," Center for Financial Institutions Working Papers 97-33, Wharton School Center for Financial Institutions, University of Pennsylvania.
    9. Aleksandar Vasilev, 2013. "On the cost of rent-seeking by government bureaucrats in a Real-Business-Cycle framework," Working Papers 2013_20, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    10. repec:aei:rpaper:1008544122 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Aranson Peter H., 1990. "Rational Ignorance In Politics, Economics And Law," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 25-42, January.
    12. Joseph T. Mahoney & Anita M. McGahan & Christos N. Pitelis, 2009. "Perspective ---The Interdependence of Private and Public Interests," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(6), pages 1034-1052, December.
    13. Klein, Peter G. & Mahoney, Joseph T. & McGahan, Anita M. & Pitelis, Christos N., 2009. "Toward a Theory of Public Entrepreneurship," Working Papers 09-0106, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Business.
    14. Dutta, Nabamita & Roy, Sanjukta, 2016. "The interactive impact of press freedom and media reach on corruption," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 227-236.
    15. Ross Mcleod, 2005. "The struggle to regain effective government under democracy in Indonesia," Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(3), pages 367-386.
    16. Vasilev, Aleksandar, 2013. "Essays on Real Business Cycle Modeling and the Public Sector," EconStor Theses, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 130522, September.
    17. Singla, Shikhar, 2023. "Regulatory costs and market power," LawFin Working Paper Series 47, Goethe University, Center for Advanced Studies on the Foundations of Law and Finance (LawFin).
    18. Lucas, David & Boudreaux, Christopher, 2018. "Federal Regulation, Job Creation, and the Moderating Effect of State Economic Freedom," MPRA Paper 92593, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. David S. Lucas & Christopher J. Boudreaux, 2019. "The Interdependence of Hierarchical Institutions: Federal Regulation, Job Creation, and the Moderating Effect of State Economic Freedom," Papers 1903.02924, arXiv.org.
    20. Ladislava Grochova & Tomas Otahal, 2011. "Corruption, Rule of Law, and Economic Efficiency: Selected Anecdotic Evidence of Bureaucratic Corruption from the Czech and Slovak Republics," MENDELU Working Papers in Business and Economics 2011-13, Mendel University in Brno, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    21. Krisztina Kis-Katos & Günther G. Schulze, 2013. "Corruption in Southeast Asia: a survey of recent research," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 27(1), pages 79-109, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    franchise; Asian crisis; Indonesia; rents; private taxation; bureaucratic extortion;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • P17 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Performance and Prospects
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pas:papers:2008-03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Prema-chandra Athukorala (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/asanuau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.