Today’s post compares working paper output among a selection of central banks. The central banks of Canada and England produce a large volume of research. To get a sense of the prioritisation of research at these central banks, I express the number of papers per year relative to the total number of employees at a given central bank. The Bank of Chile stands out for the quantity of research it produces given the size of its staff complement. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s high average level of papers per employee reflects its high level before 2019. But how might the the quality of research differ across these institutions? In an earlier post, I showed that among institutions that produce economic research, the Bank of England ranked highest among the banks considered here, although large institutions such as ECB and those in the US Federal Reserve system produce the most cited working papers. South Africa ranks near the bottom amongst major central banks in terms of the influence of research based on citations.
