. it is impossible to know how wide - spread this type of unhealthy risk taking is, or what is its significance in quantitative terms. however, this type of behavior is likely to be most prevalent during times of abundant liquidity and general stability, i. e., conditions that we currently have. moreover, it seems likely that the volume of funds managed by managers with potentially unhealthy incentive structures has grown with the increased popularity of hedge funds. but increased uncertainty about durability of benign conditions? to sum up, there has been a broad - based decline in many measurable risks and much of this development reflects factors that are welcome and sound. moreover, the markets seem to expect that global economic conditions will remain broadly favorable going forward. at the same time, one could argue that uncertainty may in fact have increased. one source of uncertainty is that the decline in risk premia may have become excessive due to unhealthy under - pricing of risks. the increasingly integrated global financial markets imply that a major see e. g., rajan, r. g. ( 2005 ) ; " has financial development made the world riskier ", paper presented at the jackson hole symposium sponsored by the federal reserve bank of kansas city, august 25 - 27, 2005 ; and rajan, r. g. ( 2007 ) ; " financial conditions, alternative asset management and political risks : trying to make sense of our times ", banque de france, financial stability review – special issue on hedge funds, no. 10, april 2007. retrenchment of risk taking in one market has a potential to feed rapidly to other markets. therefore, a large enough shock could bring about a broad - based and potentially disruptive widening of risk premia. a related concern is that the resiliency of the new global financial system in the face of a major shock remains untested. financial innovations have enabled transferring various risks to the investor with the biggest appetite for a particular type of risk. during calm and predictable market conditions, this compresses risk premia. at the same time, financial innovations may well have created new types of systemic risks that will only become evident in more turbulent conditions. finally, the combination of large global imbalances and signs that political support for globalization may be beginning to wane is a clear cause for concern and a source of uncertainty. we should avoid sounding alarmist, but one of the lessons of history is that when the consensus view

##ulation, liberalisation, and competitive forces, it is important that the various indices such as wpi or iip, which attempt to capture the underlying developments in the economy, are refined and updated on a continuous basis to provide timely information to the policymakers. third, in the context of more open economies and improvements in communication, market dynamics have become sensitive to data releases and information dissemination. all of us are aware of how market participants oftentimes misinterpret information, triggering considerable volatility in markets. we can help manage expectations and perceptions better by focussing attention on data standards as well as improving the quality of our statistics education. this is the third challenge. i hope this conference will come up with some specific thoughts on how we may address these above challenges. statistical surveys done by rbi since this seminar is focussed more narrowly on statistical surveys, let me briefly comment on the surveys done by the reserve bank. we do regular periodical surveys as well as needbased ad hoc surveys. our surveys in the external sector cover foreign liabilities and assets, software exports and non - resident deposits, etc. in the banking sector, the surveys cover distribution of credit and deposits, composition and ownership of deposits, international banking statistics, and the like. in the corporate sector, the survey of performance of private corporate business sector, conducted since 1951 - 52, has been of considerable interest to analysts. the reserve bank has also introduced several new surveys to support monetary policy formulation. these include the industrial outlook survey, inflation expectations survey for households, survey of inventories, order books and capacity utilization and survey of professional forecasters. we are also working on a survey for housing start ups. the biggest challenge for us here has been collecting information from each state / city on building permits and coming up with a reliable matrix of house - start coefficients. the special value of these new surveys is that they include information from key actors, they are forward - looking and the results are available in quick time. such survey results provide useful and timely inputs for the conduct of forwardlooking macro - policies. statistics in the rbi's work at the reserve bank, honing our skills and improving our database is a constant endeavour. we have achieved some satisfactory progress, but there are daunting challenges still. let me illustrate by giving five problems that we confront in the area of data analysis. ( i ) data revisions measuring the economy remains a complex task and data uncertainty is a fact of life. data