What is Self-Management?
Self-management is defined as efforts by an individual to control his or her own behavior (Mills, 1983). Specifically, self-management involves assessing problems, establishing goals, monitoring time and environmental issues that may hinder the accomplishment of those goals, and the use of reinforcement and punishment to regulate goal progress and attainment (Frayne, 1991). By training individuals to evaluate, monitor, and regulate themselves, they become responsible and accountable for their own progress and performance, and essentially, become “self-managers”.
The assignment I accepted for this paper is not straightforward. The task is to provide a policy maker’s perspective on some lessons from the great financial crisis for monetary policy. Having studied earlier challenging episodes in monetary history, I am well aware of the pitfalls of attempting to draw lessons from a crisis while the experience is still raw. Better to wait a decade or more, to have time to evaluate with greater clarity whether, how and under what conditions things could have evolved differently. On the other hand, there is no time to waste on suggested improvements in the policy framework if the objective is to improve the odds of better outcomes for the future. What better opportunity to offer some early thoughts on the lessons, then, than the occasion presented by this colloquium honouring Lucas Papademos, taking place right after the last meeting of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB), before the end of his tenure as Vice-President of this institution.
I focus on three issues. First, what lessons can be drawn regarding the institutional framework for monetary policy? Has the experience changed the pre-crisis consensus that monetary policy is best performed by an independent central bank focused on achieving and maintaining price stability? Should central banks be more or less independent? Should their aim be higher inflation instead of price stability, as some suggest?
Cichlids are among the most species-rich and diverse families of freshwater fishes, with a range in the Eastern Hemisphere extending throughout Africa and parts of the Middle East, including Madagascar, Sri Lanka, and along the southern coast of India. In the Western Hemisphere, cichlids occur from southern Texas to Argentina. Within the Perciformes, cichlids are placed in the suborder Labroidei, a large assemblage containing over 1800 species, or 5-10% of all living fishes. Members of this suborder possess highly derived pharyngeal jaws, a configuration referred to as the “labroid pharyngeal jaw”. Recent research suggests that the labroid pharyngeal jaw had important evolutionary consequences that have prompted significant diversification within the group, as it has allowed for development of diverse trophic behavior (for examples see:Greenwood 1978, Liem 1986, Gobalet 1989, Liem 1991).
Life history and other ecological attributes vary greatly among cichlids across their global range. In the Neotropics alone, studies have revealed a great diversity in cichlid ecology, morphology and behavior (Lowe-McConnell 1991, Winemiller et al.1995). This great diversity, in addition to providing evidence of rapid evolution, is the reason why cichlids provide a valuable resource for studies of speciation and adaptive radiation (Meyer 1987, Farias et al. 1999).
