Economics 2022
What economists learned from Covid-19
A rush of work on ‘epi-macro’ yielded breakthroughs and then faded. Will there be lasting benefits?
Economics Benchmarks 2022 report – evolving models
Central banks continued to develop their modelling frameworks in 2022, as some longer-term trends in governance structures and research agendas emerged from the data
Earnings power of economists remains above GDP per capita
Emerging market professionals earn lowest median salary, but incomes still more than double national average
Most institutions use time-series models for forecasting
Use of models differs across jurisdictions by income size
More than half of institutions favour semi-structural models
Just 35% of institutions include financial sector in key modelling
Central banks forecast GDP less accurately than inflation
Over half of central banks reviewed models in a bid to project more accurately
Majority of central banks prefer economists with master’s degree
Economists are sponsored more for training than for PhDs
Economics teams constitute just a fraction of central banks’ total workforce
Most institutions have more policy economists than research colleagues
Staff with PhDs make up 21.3% of average economics department
Four-fifths of advanced economy institutions sponsor economists to undertake PhD qualification
Central banks judge success of research by number of publications
Inflation and exchange rate most topical issues for central banks
Use of centralised data services increases across institutions
Rise of central data teams has gone hand in hand with greater use of alternative data
Alternative data used at most central banks
Non-traditional data such as Google searches widely used to support research and forecasting
Research economists devote more working time to own projects
On average, own research works consume 25% of policy economists’ working time
Advanced economy institutions tend to produce more papers
Emerging market researchers averaged five papers a year in peer-reviewed journals
Research agenda determined across multiple levels
Governors and deputy governors give final sign-off on most research publications
Majority of banks blend research and policy functions
Only one in five jurisdictions restructured economics unit in the past 12 months
Growth and inflation are top forecast indicators
More emerging markets forecast growth and inflation compared with the past year