Pulse Lab Jakarta is collaborating with Bank Indonesia’s Macroprudential Policy Department for an upcoming research dive for development that focuses on household vulnerability. Understanding household financial vulnerability is important for financial system stability, because households are deeply interconnected with financial institutions and non-financial corporations. In its macroprudential policy-making, Bank Indonesia needs to measure household financial vulnerability to mitigate systemic risks, improve intermediary functions, and increase financial system efficiency. Bank Indonesia intends to explore how big data can be used to measure household financial vulnerability alongside its banking indicators and survey results.

Through this collaboration with Bank Indonesia, PLJ hopes to facilitate exploratory research to measure household vulnerability by combining survey data and big data such as financial data, housing price data and ride-hailing transportation data. The research results are also expected to complement household vulnerability work being undertaken by Bank Indonesia, particularly for leveraging big data for financial development. 

PARTICIPANTS

PLJ intends to invite around 12 mid-career researchers from Indonesian universities or research institutions with expertise in finance development, banking, economic development, computer science/information engineering, and statistics. In particular, we are interested in the following profiles:

• Lecturers with a postgraduate degree (master’s or doctorate) with (a) two to seven years of relevant research or teaching experience in areas related to the research tasks, highlighted below, and (b) two or more scientific/ technical publications; or,
• Researchers pursuing doctoral degrees with two or more scientific/ technical publications in fields related to the research tasks, below; or,
• Researchers with a doctoral degree in related disciplines but no longer than six years experience post-doctorate.

RESEARCH TASKS

PLJ specifically invites applicants who have the ability to work on the following four research tasks:

• Understanding the default rate of house mortgage and contributing factors (Main data sources: house pricing from e-commerce data, household survey data, and credit data)
• Identifying indicators of household indebtedness (Main data sources: household survey data, credit data, food price and fintech data)
• Evaluating the effects of ride-hailing applications on the risk of car and vehicle loans (Main data sources: credit data on vehicle loans and ride-hailing data on number of driver)
• Measuring the impact of natural hazards on loans-at-risk (Main data sources: credit data and displacement tracking matrix (DTM))

APPLICATION

Each applicant is encouraged to submit:

• an Expression of Interest (optional but strongly recommended) at bit.ly/RDHV-EOI, and
• an application by 23:59 WIB on 5 July 2019 through the Google Form found here: bit.ly/RDHV-submission. Please use a Google account to submit and compile the below required documents into a single PDF file and read the guidelines carefully before submitting. 

1. Curriculum Vitae in English (including years of education, list of research activities and publications, without including any certificates); 
2. Recommendation letter in English from someone familiar with the applicant’s research skills; and,
3. One-page document in English that clearly explains the applicant’s first and second preference among the four tasks, highlighted above, covering (a) the applicant’s relevant research experience and (b) her/his ideas for potential approaches to tackle the tasks of interest. 

PLJ will select the final list of participants based on (a) academic background, (b) research experience including publication records, and (c) the quality/relevance of the applicant’s suggested approaches to data analysis.

PLJ  and Bank Indonesia will cover the participants’ expenses including transportation (from outside-Jakarta only), meals and snacks, and accommodation for the duration of the event. However, PLJ will not extend an invitation if a candidate cannot attend the full duration of the event. To access the TOR, please click this link: bit.ly/RDHV-info.