THE JAMAICA Conference Board has agreed to pass on raw consumer and company data it collects for its confidence surveys to the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute for Social and Economic Studies (SALISES), a research unit at the University of the West Indies.
The confidence surveys, introduced in 2001, collect data on consumer and business behaviour and expectations, from which extrapolations are made about economic performance.
Eight indices have been published since.
Conference Board chairman, Desmond Blades said at the signing that in making the information available to researchers and academics, the JCB was hoping to enhance the study of economics.
The arrangement was formalised with the signing of an agreement at the release of the 2003 first quarter results of the Business and Consumer Confidence indices last week. Blades signed for JCB and Professor Neville Duncan for SALISES.
Duncan, director of SALISES, said the arrangement would allow the University access to quality information.
CONSTANT ACCESS
Calling the agreement 'historic', the SALISES director said the academic community looks forward to the day when students and other professionals will have constant access to quality data on Jamaica. "This is the start," he said.
The consumer and confidence reports are compiled quarterly from survey data amassed by Don Anderson's Market Research Services, and analysed by Professor Richard Curtin, international expert in consumer surveys and head of the Survey Research Centre at the University of Michigan in the United States. Curtin is a consultant to the JCB.
The surveys and the Conference Board were initially developed with assistance from the United States Agency for International Development under an agreement that ends in June, according to Jamaica Chamber of Commerce president Michael Ammar, Jr. The JCB s a subsidiary agency of the Chamber.
