Analysis of Regional Convergence and Sustainable Development: An Indonesian Perspective

Abstraksi

This paper employs a stochastic kernel approach to examine sustainable development at the province level in Indonesia. The findings reveal that even though some provinces with a large value of sustainable development index show the tendency of divergence, most of the provinces tend to converge in terms of sustainable development. It is also observed that there is disparity in the level of sustainability in some regions, particularly in the eastern regions of Indonesia or the East Indonesia and Sulawesi regions. The ergodic distribution analysis illustrates that the Java Bali region will achieve a high level of sustainability in the future. While Kalimantan and Sumatera will probably remain at the same level, the eastern regions of Indonesia show the tendency to achieve a lower level than the other regions. Regional disparity is also observed in Sulawesi and East Indonesia. There is little doubt that the combination of divergence and regional disparity will be the challenges for these two regions in the future. These findings call for government priority to be given to boost the level of sustainability and remove disparity in the two regions.