Researching the Research: A Central Banking Edition

We build two unique data sets on the research in central banks in Europe and the United States, offering a novel insight into central banks’ research activities, the topics covered, collaborations networks, gender diversity, and research popularization. Even though we identify significant heterogeneity among different regions, we reveal several important stylized facts. Following the global financial crisis, financial stability surpassed monetary policy as the leading research topic. We have also documented a substantial decline in papers with single authors, from 40 percent in 2000 to less than 20 percent in 2019. Still, research in central banks is highly concentrated, as the top 10 percent of authors contribute to about 50 percent of all central banks’ research publications. While central banks form enormous research networks, we find that most of this research collaboration is region specific with an increasing representation of women. Nevertheless, the gender gap persists and is closing only slowly. In this respect, small central banks are found to employ more female researchers than large ones. Last but not least, major central banks with a well-established research tradition achieve the highest average impact factor, with a few research papers contributing the most to this average.