Former Governors, former and current Board members, as well as a great contingent of excellent economists and professionals have contributed to the design of monetary policy, a better understanding of our economy, and to administering an institution to which the country has entrusted great responsibility and to which we have an enormous obligation of excellence. Thank you very much. 4  BIS Review 156/2009  Table 1 Evolution of the central banks' autonomy index and inflation (*) I. Late 1980s Autonomy index Political Economic  Average inflation (1989)  Economies Advanced Emerging Developing  5.3% 18.6% 22.5%  0.39 0.27 0.27  Total 0.59 0.38 0.45  0.48 0.32 0.35  II. 2003 Average inflation (1989)  Economies Advanced Emerging Developing  Autonomy index Political Economic  2.1% 7.0% 8.4%  0.74 0.47 0.29  Total 0.81 0.75 0.67  0.77 0.61 0.48  (*) Countries with annual inflation above 100% were deleted from the sample. Sources: Arnone et al. (2007) and IMF. Figure 1  Drop in inflation and change in the autonomy of the central banks*  % drop in inflation  -0.2  -0.1 0  0.2  0.4  0.6  -0.3 -0.5 -0.7 -0.9 -1.1 Change in independence index  (*) Drop in inflation corresponds to the percent variation of average inflation between periods 1980-1989 and 2000-2008. Change in the independence index corresponds to the change in Arnone et al. (2007)'s autonomy index between the late 1980s and 2003. Sources: IMF and Arnone et al.
Also, it would be useful if the Fund could develop its own in-house view of a benchmark risk scenario which then can be used, or shared with members, in stress-testing the vulnerabilities of their economies and financial sectors. I probably have used up my allocated time. I hope my remarks have been useful. Again, I would like to thank the Independent Evaluation Office for the invitation. Thank you. 2  BIS Review 95/2006