23/11/2022

Central Bank’s Annual Research Workshop

The Central Bank's Annual Research Bulletin was launched during a half-day Research Workshop organized by the Bank's Research Department on Friday 18 November. The Bulletin, now in its fifth edition, is the Bank's annual flagship research publication and is intended to showcase, in a concise and approachable manner, a selection of the Bank's research and make it available to a wider audience.

The workshop was opened by the Governor of the Central Bank of Malta, Professor Edward Scicluna. In his introduction, Professor Scicluna gave an overview of the four articles in the Research Bulletin, which dealt with the findings of a large-scale survey on household finances and consumption patterns, the differences between advertised and registered rents, the direct macroeconomic effects of the RRF fund on the Maltese economy and, finally, on the estimation of the Bank's structural model with state-of-the-art Bayesian methods. Professor Scicluna noted how these articles are just a sample of the type of research conducted by the Bank's economists. He noted that in 2021, the Bank published a total of 40 different research outputs, ranging from research boxes or articles in its regular publications, policy notes, working papers and studies in international peer-reviewed journals. The Bulletin, together with the other economic publications and studies by the Bank, is publicly available on the website.

In the keynote presentation, Ms Elisa Lanzi from the OECD spoke about the cost of environmental inaction and economic resilience. This was followed by a discussion from two of the Bank's economists from the Research Department on the Bank's latest modelling efforts regarding climate and energy.

The final presentation focused on the main findings from the fourth wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) for Malta. This survey, which is held every three years, provides an invaluable source of information on Maltese households' balance sheet, with detailed information on their assets, liabilities, wealth, and income. The findings from this survey provide a glimpse of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on household balance sheets and finances.

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