TY  - JOUR
AU  - Levinsohn, James
AU  - Berry, Steven
AU  - Friedman, Jed
TI  - Impacts of the Indonesian Economic Crisis:  Price Changes and the Poor
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7194
PY  - 1999
Y2  - June 1999
DO  - 10.3386/w7194
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7194
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7194.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James A. Levinsohn
Yale School of Management
PO Box 208200
New Haven, CT  06520
Tel: 734/763-2319
Fax: 734/764-2769
E-Mail: James.Levinsohn@yale.edu

Steven T. Berry
Department of Economics
Yale University
Box 208264
37 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06520-8264
Tel: 203/432-3556
Fax: 203/432-6323
E-Mail: steven.berry@yale.edu

Jed Friedman
The World Bank
E-Mail: jfriedman@worldbank.org
M1  - published as James A. Levinsohn, Steven T. Berry, Jed Friedman. "Impacts of the Indonesian Economic Crisis.Price Changes and the Poor," in Michael P. Dooley and Jeffrey A. Frankel, editors, "Managing Currency Crises in Emerging Markets" University of Chicago Press (2003)

M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1999-12-01
AB  - The recent financial crisis in Indonesia has resulted in dramatic price increases.  Using very recent data, we investigate whether these price increases have impacted the cost-of-living of poor households in a disproportionately harsh way.  We find that the poor have indeed been hit hardest.  Just how hard the poor have been hit, though, depends crucially on where the household lives, whether the household is in a rural or urban area, and just how the cost-of-living index is computed.  What is clear is that the notion that the very poor are so poor as to be insulated from international shocks is simply wrong.  Rather, in the Indonesian case, the very poor appear the most vulnerable.
ER  -