This research analyzes factors affecting the scientific success of
central bankers. We combine data from the RePEc and EDIRC databases,
which contain information about economic publications of authors from
182 central banks. We construct a dataset containing information about
3312 authors and almost 80,000 scientific papers published between 1965
and 2020. The results from Poisson regressions of citation impact
measure (called the h-index) on a number of research features
suggest that economists from the U.S. Federal Reserve Banks,
international financial institutions, and some eurozone central banks
are cited more frequently than economists with similar characteristics
from central banks located in emerging markets. Researchers from some
big emerging economies like Russia or Indonesia are cited particularly
infrequently by the scientific community. Beyond these outcomes, we
identify a significant positive relationship between research networking
and publication success. Moreover, economists cooperating with highly
cited scientists also obtain a high number of citations even after
controlling for the size of their research networks.