Dr C Kirabo Jackson
President Biden announced his intent to appoint Dr C. Kirabo Jackson to be a Member of the Council of Economic Advisers. Jackson an American-born Jamaican whose father Dr. Clement Jackson was head of the Planning Institute of Jamaica in the 1980s is the Abraham Harris Professor of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. He is also a Professor of Economics, a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Jackson also attended Hillel in Kingston, Jamaica in his early formative years.
Currently, Jackson serves as the Editor-In-Chief of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. He was previously Co-Editor for the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy and the Journal of Human Resources. Jackson earned his Bachelor’s in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale University and obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. His research interests include labour economics, public finance, and applied econometrics, with a focus on the economics of education. His research has explored the role of teachers in the K-12 system, the causal impact of public-school spending on students, methods to measure impacts on students’ socio-emotional skills, and other education-related subjects.
His work has been published in the highest-impact economics journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, the American Economic Review: Insights, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, and the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. His research findings have garnered attention from numerous media outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, and others.
In 2020, Jackson was elected to the National Academy of Education and received the David N. Kershaw Award from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management in recognition of his contributions to the field of public policy analysis and management. In 2022, Jackson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honour that celebrates excellence and leadership across various disciplines and practices.
US$290 million, data out of the country’s central bank show and that was well up on the $272 million pulled in during April this year.
Inflation in Jamaica climbed by one percent in June over May, fueled by a spike in food prices, furnishings, household equipment and routine housekeeping and restaurant and accommodation services that rose 4.2 percent.
Montego Bay’s Sangster International Airport handled 448,500 passengers, an increase of 14.1 percent over the 393,100 passengers processed in June 2022 and for the six months to June, 2,656,800 travellers, 27.2 percent more than 2.09 million in 2022. Kingston’s Norman Manley International Airport processed 147,7000 passengers, an increase of 13.5 percent over the 130,200 passengers in June 2022 and for the six months to June, 829,500 travellers, 31.5 percent more than 630,600 in 2022.
The latest data out of the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) shows that stopover arrivals are up just 3.6 percent over 2019 for the first three months of 2023 and up 43.8 percent over 2022 to 733,982 arrivals. The JTB report for 2022 shows stopover arrivals up 78 percent in the June quarter compared with 2021 but down 3.3 percent compared with 2019, representing a significant improvement over the 28 percent decline in the first quarter compared with that of 2019.
The 91 days issue for $700 million that matures in September this year resulted in an average yield of 7.86327 percent and the 182 days instrument has an average yield of 7.88671 percent.
According to the Central Bank, annual inflation is projected to again be within the Bank’s inflation target range of 4 to 6 percent by the December 2023 quarter, but it noted that both core inflation and the consumer price indices are now within the 4-6 percent band at 5.7 and 5.8 percent up to April this year.
The dip in the point to point inflation below 6 percent was occasioned by a fall in the All-Jamaica Consumer Price Index (CPI) of 0.4 percent for April 2023 and was influenced mainly by a 4.2 percent fall in the index for the division ‘Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas and Other Fuels’. The movement in the division’s index was due to a reduction in the rates for electricity, which resulted in a 12.5 percent fall in the index for the group. There was also a decline in the index for the ‘Transport’ division, which moved down by 0.1 percent due mainly to reduced petrol and air travel costs. The inflation rate was, however, tempered by a 0.6 percent increase in the index for the heaviest weighted division ‘Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages.
The three months bill fell to 7.823 percent at this week’s auction, the lowest since November 2022, when the average rate came in at 7.96 percent. The six months instrument’s previous low of 7.96 percent in September last year came in at 7.975 percent at the recent auction and is also down from 8.32 percent in April this year. The nine months rate of 8.2 percent in July last year and 8.36 percent in April this year fell to 7.999 percent this week.
