Between 4 and 15 March, the Central Bank of Malta hosted Fulbright Scholar Professor Andrew Narwold of the Department of Economics at the University of San Diego, where he is also affiliated to the Energy Policy Initiatives Centre.

This is the first time that the Central Bank of Malta hosted a US Fulbright Scholar. The Fulbright programme is sponsored by the United States Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and is one of the most prestigious and competitive academic exchange programmes in the world.

The bank gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the US Embassy in Malta to make Professor Narwold's visit possible.

Professor Narwold, whose core expertise is in housing market economics and consumer financial decisions, conducted advanced classes on statistical methods for the construction of quality adjusted house price indices for the bank's Economic Analysis Department.

He also held two in-depth seminars to the bank's and National Statistics Office staff on statistical techniques and applied empirical research and reviewed research by bank economists aimed at publication in specialist as well as general dissemination.

In line with the bank's strategic support to the University of Malta - aimed to strengthen the economics profession in Malta - Professor Narwold lectured game theory to postgraduate economics students, an essential part of the intermediate microeconomics curriculum. These lectures covered decision theory, strategic form games, extensive form games, Bayesian games, mechanism design, infinite horizon games, repeated games and evolutionary games. Relevant experimental results were discussed and students participated in several in-class experiments.

Among the bank's key remits, apart from monetary policy, are economic research, statistics and financial stability. Professor Narwold's visit contributed to developing a sounder understanding of issues such as house price measures, which issue is very relevant to these fields of activity.

The bank is poised to launch other bilateral academic exchange programmes with a number of important UK universities.

The two seminar presentations are available on the Central Bank of Malta's website at www.centralbankmalta.org/staff-workshops