RBI’s several policies to improve financial literacy and financial inclusion

RBI is doing many things on these two key policy areas.

Both these issues of financial inclusion and financial literacy are used interchangeably but are very different. RBI Governor D. Subbarao explains these ideas in a recent speech on financial education. The speech was given in a RBI-OECD workshop on the same issues.

Governor explains:

Evolution of central bak governance around the world

Christopher Crowe and Ellen Meade have written a nice paper on the topic. 

In this article, we survey and quantify the trends in two major areas of central bank governance: independence and transparency. We document the steady number of industrial and developing countries over the past 10 to 15 years and discuss the effects of these aspects of governance on inflation. We also touch on another aspect of governance that has received attention more recently in key industrial countries: committee structure and decision making.

Submit research papers on macroprudential policy at Bank of Korea

Bank of Korea has invited research proposals on macroprudential policy.

The subject for the competition is “designing a structure for macroprudential policy implementation” aiming at enhancing the stability in the global financial system, with a specifical focus on the heightened role of a central bank of a small  open economy in stabilizing the financial system and on the promotion of international coordination. Both English and Korean versions of the research paper should be submitted.

The competition is open to university/college professors, senior lecturers and experts in the area of macroprudential policy. However, each research team of three or more must include at least one internationally well-known scholar who has published a number of research papers on strengthening macroprudential supervision and regulation in connection with issues that have arisen since the recent global financial crisis.

A Korean specialist may prepare and submit the application on behalf of the research team.

It will be interesting to see research on the hot topic. We still don’t know so much about the idea. It needs to be implemented and country specific contexts would matter.

Pass it on to interested people.

Hayek’s influence on nobel prize winners

I came across this paper (via Cowen on MR) which examines Friedrish Hayek’s (1974 prize winner) influence on other economists. Not having read Hayek at all was interested in catching up.  On downloading the paper, I realised the purpose of the paper was very different. 

F.A. Hayek’s broad research program has led some to conclude that his impact on economics has been minimal. This citation study examines the frequency of Nobel laureates cited by other laureates in the official Prize Lectures to understand how elite economists influence other elite economists. It finds that Hayek is the second most frequently mentioned laureate in the Prize Lectures, and he has the second most publication citations of the laureates. Hayek’s influence on the top-tier of economists is substantial.

 I did not find the methodology appealing at all. I just pointed the paper to show what kinds of methodologies economists use.

By just looking at nobel lectures of fellow nobel laureates and count whether they cite Hayek or not, is too simplistic. What matters more is how Hayek influenced their thoughts and whether he had an impact on economic research/ideas etc.

See this paper which uses nobel lectures’ autobiographical accounts to understand why they chose economics. See this paper for an example which shows the flow of thought from Tinbergen to Friedman.