In Russia, a federal state with a very large geographical area, the Central Bank has sixty territorial branches and nineteen regional banks - apparently rather modest numbers for a country with some 150 million people spread across ten time zones. But in addition the CBR in 1994 ran 1,356 cash and settlement centres, 13 banking schools, and 30 “other organisations”. To run this empire the bank employed over 52,000 staff, having created over 7,000 additional posts in the previous two years to conduct its various new functions. Central bank staffing and costs All this shows that, even though all European central banks face similar pressures, the solutions remain quite diverse. That is reflected in relative costs. Comparable data are hard to come by, but the Bank of Russia appears to have more staff per head of population than any other. The People’s Bank of China is larger, employing some 150,000 people (but only 1,000 in head office where policy is centralised), but considering the PBoC’s continuing role as banker to the state-owned enterprises that looks small in relation to a population of 1.2 billion. Other very large central banks are the Reserve Bank of India with 32,000 staff and the US Federal Reserve System with 25,000. One would expect the number of staff employed by a central bank to depend not just on the population of the country (and in this there should be some economies of scale) but also on the range of tasks it has and how efficiently it conducts them.
Legislation in 1942 followed the then German model, particularly in making the Bank of Japan subservient to the Ministry of Finance; and after the war, there was American influence. 1 Rosa Maria Lastra, “Central Banking and Banking Regulation”, LSE Financial Markets Group,  1996, page 285. BIS Review 33/1997  -3-  In Figures 1 and 2, I have attempted to capture some of the distinctions between these leading central banks. (Because I am concentrating on distinctions, I have omitted common tasks - such as the issuance of banknotes and acting as banker for government - which are carried out by virtually all central banks.) Figure 1 shows the UK’s “scores” in five areas, while Figure 2 adds in, by way of comparison, the other G5 countries. Mapping the distinctions is not an easy task. For instance, though in Germany a government office is responsible for banking supervision, it is central bank staff who undertake much of the day-to-day work of monitoring individual banks. In France, supervision is the responsibility of the Commission Bancaire, but its secretariat is effectively part of the Banque de France, and the Governor chairs it. And in Japan, the central bank closely monitors the large banks, though the responsibility for supervision formally rests with the finance ministry.