Research memoranda

inSight

27 Dec 2001

Research memoranda

Today we launch a new page on the HKMA website to enable materials produced by our Research Department to be disseminated more widely and more quickly.

Readers of our Quarterly Bulletin and other publications will be aware that we regularly publish research-based articles produced mainly by our Research Department, but also sometimes by other parts of the HKMA. All of this finds its way quickly on to our website, so that anyone with an interest in the intellectual side of what we do has free and instant access. Those with an eye on the more stratospheric regions of monetary theory can also subscribe to the papers produced by the fellows of our affiliate organisation, the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research, or visit its website (www.hkimr.org) to read them on-line. All in all, therefore, we put out quite a lot of research material, with the aim of feeding the appetite for information and analysis, and of stimulating debate.

But the HKMA also produces a great deal of research material that does not see the light of day. Often this is for very good reasons. The information in it may be market sensitive or commercially confidential. Or the research may be undertaken in connection with our contingency planning, which, for obvious reasons, we do not disclose. Some of the material, though, is simply not published because there is not the space for it in our regular publications, or because we consider it not of sufficiently broad interest to merit the expense - both to the HKMA and the subscriber - of issuing it in hard copy. This is a pity, since we believe that much of it could well be of interest to a wider research community beyond the HKMA. And, for an organisation that is guided by the principle of transparency in its deliberations, policy objectives and operations, our inclination is to seek to share as much of our research with the outside world as possible.

Fortunately, the Internet offers a convenient, efficient and cheap solution. Today sees the launch of a new page on our website devoted to the electronic dissemination of research memoranda that might not otherwise be accessible to the general public. We start with the presentation of six memoranda - on subjects ranging from electronic trading in Hong Kong to inflation targeting in Asia - produced during the course of the past year together with another four that have already been turned into articles for the Quarterly Bulletin, (there are, regrettably quite a number of others, which cannot be published for the reasons I have given above). We shall add further research memoranda to this page during the course of the coming year and beyond.

Our Research Department has now been in existence for three years. It is a compact operation in comparison with the research facilities in many other central banking institutions. But, during these three years of crisis and transformation, it has provided crucial empirical, analytical and comparative research on a very wide range of issues to the policy makers within the HKMA and on our advisory committees - and in particular the EFAC Sub-Committee on Currency Board Operations. There are few government agencies that depend more heavily on raw research than do central banking institutions. Without our research capabilities, we would have been at a considerable disadvantage over the past few years in our efforts to overhaul our currency board system and in promoting stability in our markets.

In presenting these research memoranda on our website, and in the research articles we publish in our Quarterly Bulletin, we follow the best practice in the central banking community of naming the colleagues who have written, or in some other way contributed to, the materials in question. This is not just to give credit to the excellent work that they do - though that is certainly part of the reason. It is also to stress the important fact that the opinions and conclusions in the articles and memoranda are attributable to the staff who produce them, and not necessarily to the HKMA as an organisation. The HKMA may well officially adopt many of the views expressed - but not in every case. That - and the debate which emerges from independent viewpoints - is the essence of truly useful research, and we certainly would not wish to stifle the work of our research colleagues by encouraging them to express only the opinions we wish to hear.

It is in this spirit of promoting diversity and debate that we also make use of another important feature of the Internet: interactivity. Our new research memoranda page also includes a dedicated email address, which goes straight to our Research Department, to encourage comments and dialogue. We hope that those of you who read the memoranda - in whatever field you may work or study - will take full advantage of this facility.

 

Joseph Yam

27 December 2001

 

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