rasionalitas kemiskinan

Meninggalnya 21 orang saat menerima zakat di Pasuruan, sangat memprihatinkan (disini). Zakat, disatu sisi merupakan salah satu mekanisme untuk distribusi pendapatan, namun disisi lain kesalahan dalam penyalurannya justru menyebabkan moral hazard, insiden seperti di Pasuruan maupun ketidakmandirian. Ketimpangan pendapatan jelas terlihat dari 40% penduduk dengan pendapatan terendah hanya menikmati 20% pendapatan sementara 20% penduduk dengan pendapatan tertinggi menikmati 40% pendapatan (disini).

Sebagai gambaran, potensi zakat di Indonesia cukup besar, sekitar Rp 17 trilyun setiap tahunnya (disini) bandingkan dengan alokasi dana untuk bantuan langsung tunai (BLT) sebagai kompensasi atas kenaikan BBM tahun 2008, sekitar Rp 14 trilyun (disini). Seandainya potensi zakat ini bisa maksimal, saat ini baru 2,5%-nya sekitar Rp 700 milyar, pemerintah tidak perlu mengeluarkan BLT dan alokasi BLT bisa digunakan untuk pengembangan program lainnya.

Insiden pasuruan juga mengungkap fakta nyata kemiskinan yang membelit masyarakat kita. Rasionalitas macam apa yang dimiliki oleh orang-orang yang 'mau' bersesak-sesak meng-antri pembagian zakat di Pasuruan itu? Bagi kita, mengantri untuk Rp 30 ribu mungkin tidak rasional, tapi bagi mereka yang kekurangan uang berapapun sangat bernilai. Saya teringat dalam ekonomi ada yang disebut bounded rasionality, rasionalitas yang tidak sempurna karena tidak cukupnya informasi (disini, disini). Kemungkinan besar ini yang sedang terjadi.

Ke depan, tampaknya perlu ada perbaikan mekanisme penyaluran bantuan (zakat, BLT dsb) agar lebih menjawab problema kemiskinan daripada sekedar menyentuh permukaannya saja. Tidak kalah penting, pemberdayaan yang menyertai penyaluran bantuan-bantuan tersebut, akan membangun kemandirian masyarakat.

The Price of Airline Safety

by Berly

We at kaFE depok rarely post on actual events. Maybe since most of us are students so we are more exposed to methodological and theoretical aspects of economics while the daily experience are more in contact with European livelihood.

But the recent Garuda accident in Jogja definitely worth a mention. It took away the sense of security in domestic flying. Almost as if we found out that some of Blue Bird drivers are criminals. Previous accidents are all occurred at private and budget airline, thus critics pointed out for a supposed link between low ticket price and flight safety.

Not anymore. Garuda is definitely not selling the cheapest ticket for Jakarta-Jogja route. So finally people (hopefully) can disentangle price from safety.

Is it really cost that much to apply safety measure? In the short run it will cost more but with low reputation of safety then there will be less people buying the ticket meaning less revenue. The first question is within subject, mean one company applying two different treatments. The second question is more tricky, will airline with better safety have higher ticket price?

The answer is not necessarily. Ryain air is the top budget airline in Europe with the chepest price that could range below 10 euro (before airport tax) if you ordered one month or more before the flight. Yet, it obtained high profit (329 million euros in second half 2006) and very high passenger (more than 750 flights a day) with no recent history of accident. The safety record of other main budget airlne (EasyJet, AirBerlin, TransAvia) are also very good.

An efficient airline can deliver high safety and low ticket price. Many cost items can be cut. Food on the plane? just unbundled and sale to those willing to pay. Flight entertainment and free goodies? Forget it. Personnel? Make those pretty air steward served double duty at ticket counter in the airport before take off. Revenue? Institute a dynamic ticket pricing where those that buy ticket earlier (thus having lower opportunity cost of time and value flexibility less) to get it at lower price. Today Ryanair even charge if we check-in luggage in additional to cabin luggage.

So should we all sit down, calculate the expected probability accident and risk premium we are willing to pay for safety? You could, but the complexity of the calculation, technicality of safety procedure and the possibility of death certainly raise some difficulties.

This situation resemble asymmetric information problem where the customer know less about a product than the sellers. Since the effectivity of setting up a mechanism design and incentive compability constraint is in doubt, the remedy would be to increase information flow.

EU has an agency that empowered to conduct random safety check of airline and then rank them accordingly. Those with unacceptable lowest will be ban from Europe sky, meaning huge loss of revenue while the low-but-still-acceptable airline is given warning. More important, the ranking are post online and quoted by major newspaper (to read more click here, here, and here). The concept has many similar with rating agency such as Moody or S&P. Thus, the low rank should provide premium (lower ticket price or more perk) to be selected. Equipped with the information; customers are free to choose among airlines.

So what we need is an Asean-wide agency, staffed with prffesional from all over Asean with similar responsibility as in EU. A national agency would be more susceptible to political pressure and bribe and high safety country would raise the standard due to reputation confern. Of course, there should be sufficient salary for the inspector, monetary incentive if they found security flaw and severe punishment for bribery. There is already Asia Pacific branch of International Civil Aviation Organization that can serve or assist the embryo of such agency. Who said economist always dislike regulation and against government role?

*** update:
The article has been published in Paras Indonesia with minor modifications (to read click here)

A Question on Perfect Information

by The Dreamer

In economics understanding, moral hazard is happened because of imperfect information between economics agents. Due to this hidden information, the agents -who knows better- abuse this knowledge such that it affects the pay off of the another agents. Off couse this problem would not be exist if this knowledege is available to all agents. It is already analytically proved (by Stiglizt, Salanie, Dixit,etc.) that perfect information give higher social welfare rather than the imperfect information.

Now let me tell you two stories : If u ever think to change ur occupation to be a criminal, there are some notes u should remember :

1. Always clean all the trace, finger print, shoe print, etc. It is all can be used to take u down

2. Do ur plan carefully, observe, observe and observe . Most people have pattern. Rarely do this people break the pattern. Observe the pattern on the next victim

3. Do not expense all the money you just get.Do not put it into bank or in your house. Police can always have a search warrant into ur house. It is better to send it to Swiss Bank or ask people to have legitimate bussiness.

4. Do not change ur life habit

5. Provide a very good alibies, and stick with the alibies. Police can not do aything without a clear evidence.

6. etc..

Any man can learn and extend the list by wathich regularly the FBI files and True Crime Scene in discovery channel. (a police in Indonesia must also use the same method) More over, if you want to be a rob an empty house or car, you can just join the lock pocket society (here)/read the manual on the internet (here ) and buy the lock pick kit through internet. It is max US$30 for a standard kit (here , here )

By telling a first hand story on how FBI, any police agency, and Locks works, any people can beat the system and harm any other people. For sure the agency and the lock industry can always reserach for a better method to fight the crime or a better-and-uncraked key. But once the this new method implanted, thanks to the perfect information, any people can can spread the method to crack the new method. (I do not have any statistics on the proportions of crime solved (wrt total crime committed) in US before and after the FBI, true crime scene. If there is, we could do the empirical test)

Contradicted with the common knowledge, in these two situation, the higher the degree of perfect information, the higher the possibility of moral hazard. My point is perfect information is good. But there is always a people try to abuse this perfect information for their benefit in cost of other (yes..it is also called moral hazard). May be something is just meant to be imperfect