ABSTRACT
Indonesia was a relative latecomer in market-oriented, economic reforms in capitalist East Asia. The reform agenda slowed and then received a body blow when the country experienced its worst economic crisis in thirty years during the East Asian economic crisis. A new government reform agenda, now nearly four years old, under the watchful eye of the IMF, is haltingly attempting to restore investor confidence and bring the economy back onto its feet. An assessment of the impact of trade and related investment reforms on income distribution and poverty needs to deal with these different periods in recent economic history. Thus, this chapter focuses on developments from the mid-1980s. We take the East Asian crisis in 1997 as a watershed and deal with the pre-crisis and post-crisis periods separately.
