Economics
Palestine weathers ‘complex crises’ but faces further slowdown
Unemployment remains high and the government’s budget under severe stress
Economics Benchmarks 2022 – executive summary
Key findings of the 2022 report, including model choices, governance structures and data use
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
China needs dollar reserves to bolster renminbi – Eichengreen
Authorities must reassure global markets to make renminbi reserve currency, paper argues
IMF approves long-term resilience loan for Rwanda
Fund urges “more decisive monetary tightening”
Inflation falls more than expected ahead of Fed meeting
Inflation expectations also drop, prompting calls for caution from the Fed
ECB paper examines effects of real rates on banks’ fragility
Level of real interest rates determines whether price or scale effects predominates, researchers find
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
Hungary’s Matolcsy calls economic situation ‘near-critical’
Governor blames government as inflation expected to be highest in EU
More than half of institutions favour semi-structural models
Just 35% of institutions include financial sector in key modelling
Housing plays growing role in transmitting ECB policy, paper finds
Labour earnings still most important means of transmission, researchers say
Central banks forecast GDP less accurately than inflation
Over half of central banks reviewed models in a bid to project more accurately
Bank of Thailand governor calls for better inflation model
Phillips curve model under-predicts inflation, argues governor Sethaput
Majority of central banks prefer economists with master’s degree
Economists are sponsored more for training than for PhDs
BIS data shows ‘surge’ in OTC derivatives market value
Near 50% increase in space of six months reflects “elevated uncertainty”, BIS says
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
Bank of Lithuania targets 2025 for data governance overhaul
Central bank moves to “hub-and-spoke” structure as it seeks to streamline reporting and analytics
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