Poverty alleviation has become a vigorous program in the world in recent decades. In line with the efforts applied by the government in various countries to reduce poverty, some evaluations have been practised. The impacts of macroeconomic variables such as inflation, unemployment, and economic growth have been commonly employed to be assessed for their impact on the poverty. Previous studies in Indonesia yielded mix results regarding the impact of such macroeconomic variables on the poverty. Different methods and time reference issue were the suspected causes. This paper aims to overcome such problem by utilising the Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) equipped with the latest time of observations. This paper finds in the long-run, inflation, unemployment, and economic growth significantly influence the poverty. In the short-run, only inflation and economic growth are noted affecting poverty significantly.

This paper provides a comprehensive study on energy subsidy reform simulations in Indonesia by employing two new approaches, namely, the Almost-Ideal Demand System Iterated Linear Least-Square and SUBSIM. Periods of low and high oil prices are also accounted in this paper; further, it reveals that in 1999, when oil prices were low, this reform was possible due to Indonesia's status as a net oil exporter and precise selected-reformed energy goods; however, the major concerns were the unsupporting welfare situations and the depreciation of the rupiah after the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. In 2012, the evidence shows that despite high oil prices and Indonesia being a net oil importer, this reform saved more for the government and made significant welfare impacts. Overall, this paper suggests that this reform is feasible when at least some factors, i.e., stable national exchange rate, conducive welfare situations, availability of potential recipients' database, and functioning government, are well-established.

Although its issue could be addressed from of various perspectives over the years, poverty is the object of the government's policy programs to be alleviated since the Indonesian independence. With the advancement of technology and science in the recent decades, the availability and the completeness of poverty data in Indonesia getting better. In fact, the policy-makers can assess the effectivity of their public-oriented programs easier by effectively utilizing the complete and up-to-date poverty data. However, in various approaches to poverty measurement, the Indonesian poverty data should be accompanied by another approach. This paper aims to evaluate the change of welfare of particular region over a period of several years by using the stochastic dominance method. This method also incorporates the price level impact into its poverty assessment through the extrapolated CPIs. To conduct the measurement, the National Socioeconomic Survey of Tabalong regency data, as well as the Tanjung city's inflation in the period from 2013 to 2017, are employed. The results indicate that the welfare in 2017 is better than in 2013 since the distribution in 2017 stochastically dominates the distribution in 2013 at the first and second order at any possible level of poverty lines. Therefore, this result could also be the additional input for the poverty alleviation's evaluation in order to provide a solid conclusion about the welfare changes.

The declining trend of Tabalong Regency's economic growth in recent years adversely affected the poverty rate. Further, the recent energy subsidy policy applied by the Indonesian Government has pushed the subsidy's budget down for some energy goods. Therefore, there should be an awareness regarding the current energy policy and the impact on the poverty particularly in Tabalong Regency. This paper investigates the demand system for the three main energy goods; premium fuel, electricity, and Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) in Tabalong Regency of the South Kalimantan Province. Although the same method was previously used on the different topics, this paper uniquely utilizes the combined Linear Approximation and Quadratic Almost-Ideal Demand System on the particular energy policy topic. This paper utilizes the National Social Economics Survey conducted by BPS-Statistics of Tabalong Regency in 2016. The results show that the income elasticity of demand for the top 60% and the bottom 40% of the income groups were positive; however, slight differences could be seen. For the top 60% of the income group, the income elasticities of demand were 0.97, 1.02, and 1.08 for premium fuel, electricity, and LPG respectively. On the other hand, the bottom 40% of the income group had 0.99, 1.07, and 0.91 of income elasticity of demand for premium, electricity, and LPG. The price elasticity of demand for both income groups had negative signs, which is agreeing with the theoretical demand function. These results indicate that the current energy policy should continue with securing the poor households from the possible effect.

Smoking can affect health conditions that can lead to many adverse impacts in a wider scope. The government of Indonesia has applied some excise tax regulations on tobacco products to control the consumption of cigarette items. With very limited studies in Indonesia about the price elasticity of demand for tobacco products, this paper aims to fill the gaps in the demand for cigarette items in Indonesia. By using a new approach to calculate the price elasticity of demands which is AIDS and QUAIDS with the ILLS approach, this paper found significant findings. It is found that only the filtered clove cigarettes that inelastic to the price increases. The government should carefully apply the excise tax regulation based on the cigarette items.