Michael WitterBy Dr. Michael Witter in a letter to the Editor
IN ITS editorial of Friday, November 2, 2001, The Gleaner focused on the importance of research to support informed decision-making, and the responsibility of the University to contribute to new knowledge. There is no doubt that research output is far too low for our society's needs, and some of the reasons for this were explored by Dr. Vascianie in his article in The Gleaner of November 5.
The Gleaner editorial scored the Department of Economics for "not (playing) a catalytic role in facilitating research" on the informal economy. The informal economy is one of those phenomena that many people speak about without any explicit common understanding of the term. Indeed, this is also true of the academic literature on the subject.
For the record, work on the "informal economy" in Jamaica goes back to 1977, and more recently several papers by members of the Department of Economics on various aspects, such as the size and composition, of the informal economy were published in the early 1990s. Since then there have been many unsuccessful attempts by the Department to secure funding to do the necessary survey work on informal economic activities. Despite that, there are at least three ongoing research projects on informal economic activities that are sifting through secondary sources of information and assembling bits and pieces of primary data.
The Gleaner also charged the Department with "spearheading research on what economic qualities are needed to make (projects using banana pulp) profitable". This too is an example of an area, namely, the economics of agro-industrial products, which is under-researched. We therefore understand the spirit of the criticism in its widest sense.
It is ironic that the same Department that gained more international than local recognition from the work of the celebrated George Beckford, much of it on the Caribbean Banana Industry, should today stand accused of insufficient research in this vital area of the Caribbean economy. One of the major strategic thrusts of the Department is to rebuild the capacity for research in the economic of natural resources, and to cultivate the demand by students for courses in this sub-discipline of economics.
A broader picture of the Department's academic work, say in the last decade, would have highlighted publications by members of the Department of Economics on the relative burden of taxation, on macroeconomic policy and management, on economic growth, on the social and economic impacts of structural adjustment, on the national debt, on financial markets, on the financial sector crisis, on the changing international market conditions, on poverty, and on crime. This reflects a rather broad set of research activities for a small team of economists that teaches over 40 courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Typically, over 1,100 students are enrolled in the first-year course, and over 500 students either have a major or a minor field in economics.
Enhancing the quantity and quality of research output, and the quality of instruction provided to our students are the highest priorities for the Department. Indeed, we are constantly balancing the demands of teaching large numbers of students, and providing public service to governments, private institutions, and NGOs, with the need for quality research time.
In our efforts to attract resources to fund our projects, we try to collaborate with public sector, private sector, and international institutions as a way of easing the resource constraints while benefiting from different perspectives.
Research on informal activities is especially challenging because of popular suspicion that research will expose the participants to government attention, and because, even more than the rest of the society, operators of informal activities are not inclined to keeping records.
Even when informants are co-operative, researchers have to beware of inaccuracies due to incomplete perceptions and to lapses of memory.
The print media, and The Gleaner in particular, are important sources of information to researchers studying informal economic activities. We appreciate the obverse recognition that the editorial grants to the importance of the Department to the society by way of its criticism. We assume as well that the importance that The Gleaner attaches to research inclines the newspaper to assist our scholars and students to fill the gaps in our knowledge.
Dr. Michael Witter, is Head of the Department of Economics, UWI, Mona
