54th Annual Monetary Studies Conference

ABOUT THE ANNUAL MONETARY STUDIES CONFERENCE (AMSC)

The Regional Programme for Monetary Studies (RPMS) was established in 1968 as a partnership among the central banks of Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries, the University of the West Indies and the University of Guyana. The aim of the RPMS was to facilitate high quality research in monetary, financial and central banking issues in the region and to provide a forum for the collaboration of central banks’ staff and academics from the universities. To encourage this exchange of ideas on a regional level, the Annual Conference of Monetary Studies was birthed and became a key function of the RPMS.

The Caribbean Centre for Monetary Studies (CCMS) was formally established in May 1995, to carry forward the work of the previous RPMS. Arranging the annual conferences, seminars, workshops and specially designed training courses for central banking personnel became a part of the mandate of CCMS.

Evolving from the CCMS, the Caribbean Centre for Money and Finance (CCMF) was formally launched in May 2008. The work of the CCMF continued to build on the foundation laid by the previous institutions, to facilitate high quality research in areas such as monetary policy, investment, securities, insurance and other financial sector issues. The CCMF also undertook an exercise to digitize all past conference papers, thus providing a rich source of research material on Caribbean economies. The operations of CCMF came to an end on 31 December 2017.

On 17 May 2018, the Governors of the participating central banks executed a Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MMoU) for the establishment of the Caribbean Economic Research Team (CERT). CERT’s purpose includes the conduct of research programmes on monetary and financial policy issues for the Caribbean region; the hosting of conferences, workshops, seminars, data base development and training courses in relation to the research programme; and the dissemination and publishing of research material. The operation of CERT is based at the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, but it operates as a virtual research institution.

The Annual Monetary Studies Conference is the oldest and best-established academic conference of economists in the Caribbean. Each year the conference attracts many presentations dealing with an array of pertinent macroeconomic issues. All the past and current conference proceedings are located on the CERT website. With the exception of 2020 when the conference was cancelled due to the Covid-pandemic, the AMSC has been held consistently every year for the past 55 years.