Arndt's Story: The Life of an Australian Economist

Arndt's Story: The Life of an Australian Economist. By Peter Coleman, Selwyn Cornish and Peter Drake. Canberra: Asia Pacific Press, Australian National University. 2007. Pp. 338. Professor Heinz Wolfgang Arndt, who passed away on 6 May 2002, was a towering figure in the establishment of the Australian National University's (ANU's) study of Southeast Asian economies. He either directly supervised, or had substantial influence on, a large number of Southeast Asianist academic careers spawned at ANU. He established the Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies (BIES), which remains the standard journal in the field on the Indonesian economy. This book concludes that it was ANU's provision for student fieldwork in Indonesia (and other Asian countries) and BIES, under Arndt's leadership, that gave the institution an edge (p. 266). Arndt's contribution to understanding Indonesia's political economy is profound, and lives on with those whom he mentored. He also had some experience of the rest of Asia, including Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore, South Korea, Soviet Central Asia, the Philippines and also Papua New Guinea.