Articles by Central Banking staff
Economics Benchmarks 2021 report – executive summary
Covid-19 coloured central banks’ views on the governance of their economics function in the past year, from research topics to forecasting, data, publications and more
Larger research teams tend to publish more
Central banks with bigger teams report greater publishing volumes, but variation remains
Advanced economies draw on wider range of models
DSGE models and newer techniques more common at advanced economy central banks
Reserve Benchmarks 2021 – presentation
Central Banking’s reserve subject matter specialist Victor Mendez-Barreira speaks with Chris Jeffery about liquidity, reserves coverage, external partners, human and tech resources, and ESG implementation
Quarterly forecast updates predominate
Frequency of forecasts varies more widely in emerging markets
Data services centralised at minority of central banks
Central data governance and technology services used by three in 10 central banks
Alternative data fuels central bank research
Important research areas include monetary transmission, exchange rates, digitisation, SMEs and climate change, against the backdrop of Covid
Pandemic spurred use of alternative data
Advanced and emerging market economies prioritise different applications
Unemployment forecast by minority of emerging market economy nations
Data highlights differences based on local economic circumstances
Currency Benchmarks 2021 report – executive summary
Perspectives on staffing, circulation, forecasting, note security and composition, outsourcing and more
One in five central bank economists have a PhD
Central banks in Africa lag behind peers in sponsoring PhD programmes
Covid-19 causes bigger growth forecast errors
But central banks perform better at forecasting inflation
Economist salaries outpace GDP per capita
Salaries were six times higher than GDP per capita, on average
Policy economists outnumber research economists
Central banks with their own pure research departments tend to employ more policy economists
Nearly 40% of central banks have financial sector in main forecast model
Semi-structural models remain favoured option for producing key forecasts
Economists tend to perform both policy and research duties
Only around a quarter of economics departments have a pure research function
Most currency departments operated remote working models during pandemic
Many central banks employed a split team structure to ensure critical functions were maintained
Reserve Benchmarks 2021 report – executive summary
Findings on liquidity management, strategic asset allocation, technology resources and green investments
Advanced economies more likely to outsource counterfeit detection
Emerging market economies more likely to outsource distribution
Central bank currency department costs on the rise
Majority of central banks’ budgets have also increased over the past five years
Higher-denomination banknotes have longer lifespans
Median correlation was 0.9 across 22 central banks
Banknote demand forecast to rise in 2022
Median forecast percentage change was 7.6%, but ranged from -59% to 17%
Half of central banks quarantined banknotes during the pandemic
But only 37% ran a study relating to Covid-19 and banknotes
Banknote forecasting with big data tools on the rise
Three-quarters of central bank currency departments yet to use big data