at the accra beach, the caribbean centre for money and finance, assisted by the caribbean technical assistance centre, convened a conference on a caribbean regional project on price formation, a project which is led by professor roland craigwell of the uwi, who is an associate of the ccmf. the novel feature of the project is that it measures observed behaviour of prices of specific items over time, reporting on how frequently prices change, whether they go down as well as up, and what are the magnitudes of change for different items. this contrasts with the orthodox approach to price, which seeks to determine a demand and a supply, and to find a point of equilibrium. we need to take eclectic approaches to empirical work, acknowledging that economic theory can lead us in the wrong direction, and economic measurement and testing is at best a makeshift process. in our universities we teach aspiring economists to ask whether research has theoretical foundations ; rather, they should be asking themselves whether the research makes sense, and follows sound principles of logic. the reality is that economics knows of no overarching theories that stand up to all tests, and we must therefore admit to a variety of small theories, to be understood, not as the laws of the medes and persians, but as clues to aid us in the search for deeper insight into the way the economy works. we must also admit that our statistics and our tests are very fragile. we make statements like “ the economy grew by 5 percent ” with the same assurance as the statement that “ delisle worrell is 5 ’ 5 ” tall ”. those are not comparable statements of fact. my height can be established with certainty ; the gdp of the country is an educated, informed guesstimate. the machinery simply does not exist to survey every company and individual who produce a good or service for sale, compute the total value of all those goods and services, deduct the value of all the materials and goods they bought, the electricity and input services they used, and adjust all those calculations for the changes in prices of all inputs and outputs. so we have to approximate. our econometric tests are laden with assumptions that we often seem to forget. the most basic is that the future will be like the past, an assumption which we know to be more and more unwarranted, the further out we go. to give just one illustration : it is not reasonable to make inferences about the international economic crisis of 2008 from research on the stock market crash

to be, of invaluable assistance to us in that capacity. beyond this, he is a friend of barbados, one of a distinguished list of international luminaries whose informal support and advice has done much to assist this small nation in making its way in a changing world. with bruce zagaris as lecturer, this week ’ s course takes us to the frontier of practice in international criminal law, which is where we need to be, in order to be most competitive. our heartfelt thanks to bruce ; we really do appreciate his willingness to put his expertise at our disposal, and the committed support he has given us, over the years. we look forward to a rewarding week with him. bis central bankers ’ speeches