LEADING JAMAICAN economist Dr. Damien King, and four young Jamaican doctoral candidates studying at leading Universities attended a Gleaner Editors' Forum last week to talk about the work of the extremely ambitious Jamaica Economy Project.
The Jamaica Economy Project is an independent project based at the University of the West Indies and chaired by Dr. John Rapley, senior lecturer in the Department of Government (and Gleaner foreign affairs columnist).
Participants include persons from a wide cross section of Jamaican society including the diaspora.
Group members were taking time out from their week-long mini conference held at the University of the West Indies to discuss the project's preliminary findings. The group kindly agreed to give The Gleaner a brief update on three of the seven different streams of research the project was undertaking, as well as a look at some of the cross-cutting country comparisons they were making to test their research.
Dr. King, as leader of the visiting delegation, explained the genesis of this exciting project. The full name, 'Taking Responsibility - the Jamaican Economy since Independence', gives one a good feel for its overall thrust.
He stated that the project was born out of the group's perception (supposedly reflecting a wider societal view) that the Jamaican economy had underperformed for a long time. In fact, contrary to popular opinion, this underperformance had been a persistent feature of all of Jamaica's post Independence history, but no comprehensive research had been undertaken of the whole period to explain the fundamental factors for this underlying underperformance.
Crime.In addition to these areas, Dr. King led a group that studied the macroeconomics 'background' over the period, providing the economic history that needed explanation. Each group had a research leader, but the project was open to input from participants at home and abroad.
The preliminary work of the project has largely been done, and the findings were being discussed last week at an interim mini conference.
However, the most important primary research phase, is scheduled to begin, after the conference has ended. This research, taking place over the summer, will be the most intense (and expensive) phase of the project. The overall objective of this research phase will be to explain why the Jamaican economy had underperformed, and ultimately provide a platform for a way forward.
GOLDEN 1960S MASKED SERIOUS PROBLEMS
Doctoral candidate Dana Morris outlined the objective of Dr. King's "background" group as looking at development policies against actual outcomes, as well as monetary and fiscal policies over the period. The goal of the research is to answer questions such as why have we run fiscal deficits for significant periods of our history.
One interesting finding was that the 'golden years' of the 1960s, when we experienced average growth of over five per year, masked serious problems of rising unemployment and inequality, setting the stage for social discontent. The trickle down from the drivers of the economy, bauxite and tourism, was relatively small as the growth failed to absorb Jamaica's labour surplus. Most controversially, the import substitution policy which was adopted to develop the manufacturing sector actually failed, as the share of manufacturing in GDR didn't change over the period.
Doctoral candidate Indiana Mint (who was also the country specialist for Ireland) made her presentation on behalf of Dr. Iris Schoberg's Institutional and Administrative group. The main objective of the group is to look at whether a lack of administrative capacity has been a barrier to development.
WEAKENED CIVIL SERVICE
Ms. Mint said preliminary research suggests that our civil service was neutral, independent and strong at independence, although possessing insufficient capacity. However, while capacity has increased, although it is perhaps still insufficient, continuous attempts at politically-driven civil service reform, frequently undertaken in a reactionary as opposed to a forward-thinking fashion, have weakened some of its positive aspects at independence.
In addition, she noted that the role of our cultural norms in affecting the rules, such as our Constitution, needs to be examined. For example, for Jamaica to get beyond our mindset of division, which is a product of our political culture, will require much greater trust in the society. The recent Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), she argued, is potentially a significantly positive move in the attempt to address divisions in the society.
Doctoral candidate Oliver Ferguson is the project's country specialist for Barbados. He explained that in order to place our history in an international context, the project has chosen six comparison countries which the group believes are most similar to Jamaica in terms of size, history or endowments, or some combination thereof.
The countries chosen were Ireland, Mauritius, Barbados, Botswana, Hong Kong and Singapore. It was believed that by looking at the performance of these comparison countries over the same period, one would be able to eliminate the many "myths" espoused as reasons for Jamaica's economic underperformance.
LOW IMPACT OF 1970S OIL CRISIS
One of these myths is the belief that the 1970s oil crisis played a significant role in Jamaica's economic underperformance during that decade. Mr. Ferguson posited that even though all oil-importing countries were affected by the crisis, for most countries, the oil shock was not sufficient to "retard" growth, and most countries, recovered relatively quickly, unlike Jamaica. This leads one to believe that if it did not impact very similar countries to the same extent as Jamaica, then there must have been other factors in our very poor economic performance in the 1970s.
