Firman Witoelar Kartaadipoetra joined the ANU Indonesia Project, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics, in November 2018. He is the current Lead Editor of the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies (BIES). Previously he was the research director of SurveyMeter, a research organization based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Before that, he was a research economist at the development economics research group (DECRG) at the World Bank, Washington, DC. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Michigan State University and was a Rockefeller Postdoctoral Fellow at the Economic Growth Center, Yale University.

Firman’s research interest is in the broad area of development microeconomics, in particular health behavior and outcomes, economics of aging, education and labor market outcomes, consumption and income dynamics, intersection of poverty and gender, long term dynamics of human capital formation and outcomes, survey design and methodology, and impact evaluation. Since 2000, Firman has been involved with the development and implementation of Indonesia Family Life Survey including as one of the Co-Principal Investigators of IFLS4 (2007) and IFLS5 (2014).

Firman is a research fellow at the ANU Policy Experiments Lab, a faculty affiliate at Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and at CPC Learning Network, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. He is also a member of Statistics Indonesia’s (BPS) advisory council (Forum Masyarakat Statistik) for the period of 2023-2024.

Recent publications:

[New] “In Pursuit of Power: Land Tenancy Contracts and Local Political Business Cycles in Indonesia” (with Takashi Kurosaki and Saumik Paul). September 2024. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. [Link]

“Assessing the level of poverty and utilization of government social programs among tobacco farmers in Indonesia”. (with Gumilang Sahadewo, Raphael Lenchuca, Shashika Bandara, and Jeffrey Drope). March 2024. Nicotine and Tobacco Research [Link]

“When Transparency Fails: Financial Incentives for Local Banking Agents in Indonesia”.(with Erika Deserranno and Gianmarco León-Ciliotta ). June 2023. Accepted at The Review of Economics and Statistics. [Link] [Working paper] [VoxDev article]

Teaching

IDEC8016 Microeconomic Analysis and Policy (Course Convener since 2020)

IDEC8011 Masters Research Essay (Guest Lecturer)

IDEC8026 Quantitave Policy Impact Evaluation (Guest Lecturer)

POGO8500 Evidence and Analysis in Public Policy (Guest Lecturer)