Daniel Suryadarma

IEA – Could you walk us through the key moments that shaped your path – from your earliest exposure to economic thinking, to what sparked your interest in the field, and ultimately what drew you to academic research?

Daniel – My path to economics research is serendipitous. I started university with a major in computer science and a minor in economics. Just before I started my senior year, an economics professor called and asked me to consider switching to an economics major – he thought I had good economic intuition and should take more economics courses. So, I did. The second lucky coincidence occurred when I had just returned home to Indonesia and was looking for work. I could have become a university lecturer, but instead, due to a series of fortunate events, I joined the SMERU Research Institute. There, I found my passion for research on education, poverty, and social protection. SMERU was also an institution that cared deeply about rigorous, world-class research. Back then, not many institutions upheld this principle. This built my appetite for rigorous, data-driven research, which resulted in a series of journal articles with my mentors Sudarno Sumarto and Asep Suryahadi, a scholarship to pursue my PhD in Australia, and a lifelong commitment to conducting research as rigorously as possible.

IEA – In your recent work, you worked on the impact of direct elections on people’s trust in state and political institutions using a major political reform in Indonesia. Can you briefly summarize your findings? What surprised you most about these findings, and how do they compare to similar reforms in other developing countries?

Daniel – This paper, co-authored with Ridho Al Izzati, Asep Suryahadi, and Teguh Dartanto, was in the incubator for about a decade. The basic premise is that trust between people and the state, as well as in political institutions, is good for society and the economy. Direct elections, where voters directly choose their government leaders, are supposed to make leaders more attuned to people’s needs and wishes, thereby increasing trust. We empirically tested this hypothesis using a natural experiment in Indonesia, which allowed us to determine the causal impact of direct elections on trust in institutions. We found that the effect is positive, but only when the elections were held with low hostility. I believe our paper is among the first, especially in the context of developing countries, to rigorously estimate this causal relationship. It is important because there has been pressure in some countries to step back from direct elections, or democracy in general.

IEA – In another paper you study the heterogeneous impact of internet availability on female labor market outcomes in Indonesia. What motivated you to study this particular intersection of technology and gender in labor markets, and how do your findings from Indonesia inform our understanding of digital inclusion globally?

Daniel – Technological progress has a gender dimension because gender differences exist in society and the economy. Decades ago, labor-saving technology, like washing machines, allowed women to work because they no longer had to spend so much time washing clothes. This gender impact occurred because traditionally, women were doing most of the washing. It is the same with the internet. In some societies, social norms or safety concerns preclude women from working outside the homes. In most countries, women still bear the brunt of household tasks, and in general, they have less access to credit. The internet could help women differently than it helps men by enabling home-based or part-time work or allowing them to start a home-based business with minimal start-up capital. Even with the gender norms held constant, the Internet could improve women’s employment opportunities. As with the previous study, the key here is to provide evidence of the causal impact of the internet on women’s labor market outcomes. So far, especially in the context of developing countries, rigorous evidence is rare.