The Scientization of Central Banks

In the last decades, central banks have become crucial institutions in the management of many countries' economies. This evolution has been accompanied by a rising ‘scientization' of central banks. Scientization could result from the wish to base policy decisions on "science" (mainly, economics); hence it could be understood as the logical consequence of the technical dimension of central banks' interventions (whether regarding their role in terms of monetary policy, or of micro- and macro-regulation and the supervision of the banking and financial system). Notwithstanding this logic, scientization then comes with the risk of making central banks increasingly "apoliticized," "basing their views on (…) the language of science" (Marcussen, 2009), out of reach of the citizens' (and politicians'?) understanding and control. Besides, it is not easy to distinguish the actual reliance of central banks' decision-making on science from the mere reference made to science for reputational and communicational motivations. Whatever their motives, central banks have also become a major provider and funder of (economic) research; for instance, most macroeconomists publishing in academic journals are affiliated to central banks (Claveau and Dion 2018). This rising engagement of central banks with the production of economic knowledge raises the question of their influence on the content of such knowledge: how does this affect the paths taken by research, or limit the number of contributions criticizing central banks' policy? We think that the concept of scientization is a valuable concept, as it helps raising relevant questions to study the interplay between central banks' practices and the ideas and tools developed by economists, as well as to think about the role that science can play in the choice, the implementation, and the justification of economic policies: (1) How have hiring and promotion patterns changed over the years in central banks? How has this impacted central banks' research practices and/or the policymaking process? (2) Which research policies were developed by central banks? How have these research policies reshaped research dynamics in economics (topics, theoretical frameworks, empirical methods)? (3) How has economic knowledge been competing with other types of knowledge in central banks (law, finance, management, new quantitative approaches like machine learning, etc.)?(4) How has research become a reputational and communicational issue for central banks? (5) Did central banks become more reliant on science, when implementing their policies?