Efforts by the Banque de France first initiated in 2007 to overhaul its recruitment process as it sought to increase the size and diversity of its research staff have "paid off far beyond any reasonable initial expectations", according to a new external review.

The French central bank now boasts 91 researchers and 50 research assistants, who produced 64 working papers – in addition to a host of other publications – in 2013. Patrick Bolton, Stephen Cecchetti and Lucrezia Reichlin, the authors of