I was invited to a roundtable discussion on the first part of the above question today, along with the heads of several think tanks in Colombo. Having gone out of sense of citizenship, I will summarize the key points that I made so something is realized from the expenditure of two hours that could have been otherwise spent. Be it academic research or policy-relevant research there is always an audience. What matters are that audience’s criteria of research quality. In the academic world, peer review operationalizes that albeit imperfectly.