Dear colleagues,
This call for contributions could be of interest to some members of the list:
ESHS Symposium proposal: “The Scientization of Central Banks”
10th European Society for the History of Science conference - Brussels, 7-10 September 2022
Aurélien Goutsmedt (UCLouvain)
Francesco Sergi (Université Paris-Est Créteil)
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 can designate different dynamics:
1.
the increasing role of economists within central banks, with the hiring of economists in the staff or with economists accessing executive positions
(see Conti-Brown 2016; James 2020);
2.
the development of research centers within central banks, the increase of internal funding devoted in research projects, and the increase in the
publication by central bank staff of academic works in peer-reviewed journals (Claveau and Dion 2018);
3.
the use, in central banks’ analysis, policy, and communication routines, of conceptual devices coming from the economic discipline, like forecasting
models (see Backhouse and Cherrier 2019);
4.
the emphasis on science/economics put by central bankers in their communication about the policies implemented (Mudge and Vauchez 2018).
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, 375-376), 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.
To investigate further the questions raised by the concept of scientization, we are thus interested in contributions that study these different dynamics with an historical perspective
and in different geographic areas. Questions, among others, that seem to us of great interest are:
·
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?
·
How has the role and function of economic staff evolved?
·
Which research policies were developed by central banks? How have these research policies reshaped research dynamics in economics (topics, theoretical
frameworks, empirical methods, etc.)?
·
How has economic knowledge been competing with other types of knowledge in central banks (law, finance, management, new quantitative approaches
like machine learning, etc.)?
·
How has economic research become a reputational and communicational issue for central banks?
·
Did central banks become more reliant on science, when implementing their policies?
If you are interested in participating in such a special session at the EHSH 2022 conference, please write to Aurélien Goutsmedt ([log in to unmask])
and Francesco Sergi ([log in to unmask])
with a short summary of a contribution. Francesco and I will then have to fill an application form for this special session with a summary of the session and short abstracts of the different contributions, to be sent before
December 31st, 2021.
Information on this special session
here.
More information on the ESHS 2022 conference
here.
Backhouse, Roger E., and Beatrice Cherrier. 2019. “The Ordinary Business of Macroeconometric Modeling: Working on the Fed-Mit-Penn Model, 1964–74.”
History of Political Economy 51 (3): 425–47.
Claveau, François, and Jérémie Dion. 2018. “Quantifying Central Banks’ Scientization: Why and How to Do a Quantified Organizational History of Economics.”
Journal of Economic Methodology 0 (0): 1–18.
Conti-Brown, Peter. 2016.
The Power and Independence of the Federal Reserve. Princeton University Press.
James, Harold. 2020.
Making a Modern Central Bank: The Bank of England 1979–2003. Studies in Macroeconomic History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marcussen, Martin. 2009. “Scientization of Central Banking: The Politics of a-Politicization.” In
Central Banks in the Age of Euro, 373–90. Oxford University Press.
Mudge, Stephanie L. 2018. “Too Embedded to Fail.”
Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 43 (3 (165): 248–73.
Mudge, Stephanie L., and Antoine Vauchez. 2016. “Fielding Supranationalism: The European Central Bank as a Field Effect.”
The Sociological Review 64: 146–69.
Best Wishes,
Aurélien Goutsmedt
FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher,
ISPOLE, UCLouvain (Collège Leclercq, B.227)
Managing editor of
OEconomia
Personal Website :
https://aurelien-goutsmedt.com
REHPERE Network Website :
https://rehpere.org/aurelien-goutsmedt
Github :