The project "Taking Responsibility" is executed in 4 Phases. The first two, Establishing the Operational Foundation of the Project and Launching the Research Initiative have been completed. We are currently in Phase 3 and are pleased to announce that we have been able to conduct our work well within established timelines.

Six research questions ground "Taking Responsibility". Each question is led by a group leader, an outstanding scholar in his or her own right, who provides the intellectual guidance necessary in the investigation. The questions are:

• What impact has Jamaica’s post-independence leadership had on the course of the country’s development?
  Group Leader: Professor Alvin Wint
  Rapporteur: Dr Anna Perkins

• What have been the elements of the social psychology of under performance in the island and what is the effect on development?
  Group Leader: Mr. Horace Levy

• Has Jamaica’s post-independence institutional framework and administrative capacity been beneficial, detrimental or inconsequential to the country’s development? Has corruption been unusually problematic in Jamaica’s post-independence development?
  Group Leader: Dr. Eris Schoburgh
  Rapporteur: Ms Indianna Minto

• How did the external economic and political environment affect Jamaica’s post-independence economic development?
  Group Leader: Dr. Diana Thorburn
  Rapporteur: Ms Myra Colding

• To what extent did political coalitions account for the policy choices made in Jamaica? Has Jamaica’s pattern of income- and wealth-distribution and natural-resource endowment been helpful or hurtful to the country’s post-independence development? Does the diaspora have any effect at all on the country’s development?
  Acting Group Leader: Dr. John Rapley
  Rapporteur: Ms Farrah Brown

• Is Jamaica’s crime-rate exceptional? What has been its impact on economic performance?
  Group Leader: Dr. Anthony Harriott
  Rapporteur: Ms Tres-Ann Coke