Crises and the Volatility of Indonesian Macro-Indicators

This paper examines the volatility of some of Indonesian macroeconomic indicators, namely the Bank Indonesia rate, inflation, and exchange rates. It is argued that after the financial crisis the variability of these variables increases and this makes it more difficult to predict them. The estimated ARCH parameters increases overtime, indicating higher contribution of shock over several periods. From the random walk, historical mean, moving average and simple regression, it was found that the quality of prediction after the crisis decreases. Financial manager and other policy makers may adjust their strategy to account for this increase in variability.