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CentrePiece

The Centre's magazine features new research and policy ideas from the CEP. Written for non-specialist readers, CentrePiece articles are analytical, rigorously-evidenced and showcase the latest economic methods. Published three times a year.

Illustration from CentrePiece Summer 2022
CentrePiece Summer 2022
The impact of Brexit on food prices

This month's CentrePiece cover story shows how economists untangled the effects of Brexit and Covid-19 to reveal how the early impact of Brexit increased food prices in the UK. Read more...
Illustration from CentrePiece Summer 2022
The economics of levelling up

There is an economic tension at the heart of the government's plans for 'levelling up' the UK, according to CEP's Henry Overman. He argues that getting serious about helping people to access good job opportunities will require significant investment. Read more...

Latest CentrePiece articles

CentrePiece article
in brief... Confusopoly: how mobile phone companies use product complexity to raise prices

Confusing consumers can be profitable for companies, particularly in a highly competitive market. Christos Genakos, Tobias Kretschmer and Ambre Nicolle find evidence that, for a period, phone operators decreased the tran...Read more...

Christos Genakos, Tobias Kretschmer and Ambre Nicolle

21 June 2022

CentrePiece article
Lessons from ten years of the World Happiness Report

The World Happiness Report gives us an annual insight into global wellbeing. Maria Cotofan looks at what we have learned about the determinants of wellbeing in the past ten years – and what challenges and opportunities l...Read more...

Maria Cotofan

21 June 2022

CentrePiece article
Reducing gender gaps in mathematics education

Girls and young women underperform in mathematics relative to their male peers - a loss of talent that may hinder productivity growth. Almudena Sevilla and Pilar Cuevas-Ruiz explain how new developments in gender economi...Read more...

Pilar Cuevas-Ruiz and Almudena Sevilla

21 June 2022

CentrePiece article
in brief... Social mobility in the time of Covid-19

Young people, especially those from poorer households, have been hard hit by the economic impact of Covid-19. Andrew Eyles assesses the extent of the shock and what it means for social mobility - the extent to which indi...Read more...

Andrew Eyles

21 June 2022

CentrePiece article
Covid-19: the impact on local crime rates

The pandemic changed the way people worked, shopped, socialised and travelled. Patterns of crime and policing changed too. Shubhangi Agrawal, Tom Kirchmaier and Carmen Villa-Llera reveal how different parts of the UK are...Read more...

Tom Kirchmaier and Carmen Villa-Llera

21 June 2022

CentrePiece article
Young people’s university plans: evidence from German reunification

Around a decade after Germany's reunification, a long-standing educational gap between the east and west of the country - completion of the certificate needed to enter university - had closed. Ghazala Azmat and Katja Kau...Read more...

Ghazala Azmat and Katja Kaufmann

21 June 2022

CentrePiece article
How Brexit has raised UK food prices

Some products imported to the UK from the European Union have been more affected by the post-Brexit trading rules than others. Jan David Bakker, Nikhil Datta, Josh De Lyon, Luisa Opitz and Dilan Yang find that leaving th...Read more...

Jan David Bakker, Nikhil Datta, Josh De Lyon, Luisa Opitz and Dilan Yang

21 June 2022

CentrePiece article
Trade disruptions in the wake of Brexit

A dramatic fall in the value of UK imports from the European Union relative to the rest of the world occurred when the post-Brexit Trade and Cooperation Agreement came into effect. What's more, according to research by R...Read more...

Rebecca Freeman, Kalina Manova, Thomas Prayer and Thomas Sampson

21 June 2022

CentrePiece article
The economics of levelling up

There is an economic tension at the heart of the government’s plans for 'levelling up' the UK, according to CEP's research director Henry Overman. He argues that getting serious about helping people to access good job op...Read more...

Henry G. Overman

21 June 2022

CentrePiece article
Remembering David Marsden

David Marsden, who passed away in August 2021, was involved in CEP research for many years, working on employment and industrial relations, youth employment and training, performance-related pay, performance management a...Read more...

David Metcalf

22 February 2022

CentrePiece article
In Brief... How Pelé changed Brazilian football

A ban on non-compete agreements in Brazilian football led to an increased lifetime income for players. But as research by Bernardo Guimaraes, João Paulo Pessoa and Vladimir Ponczek reveals, it was older players who gaine...Read more...

Bernardo Guimaraes, Joao Paulo Pessoa and Vladimir Ponczek

22 February 2022

CentrePiece article
UK labour shortages and immigration: looking at the evidence

Can the shortages of workers reported by the UK's food and drink sector be solved by making it easier to hire migrants? How will wages in these sectors change? And is there a conflict between short- and long-term fixes? ...Read more...

Alan Manning

22 February 2022

CentrePiece article
The effects of college capital projects on student outcomes

What can the UK government expect to get for its £1.5 billion investment in further education colleges? Claudia Hupkau and Sandra McNally investigate the benefits of capital projects in the sector and find that they help...Read more...

Stephen Gibbons, Claudia Hupkau, Sandra McNally and Henry G. Overman

22 February 2022

CentrePiece article
What have the 2021 Nobel laureates done for us?

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to David Card, Joshua Angrist and Guido Imbens. Jörn-Steffen Pischke explains how the use of natural experiments in empirical economics, work in which they were pione...Read more...

Jörn-Steffen Pischke

22 February 2022

CentrePiece article
What lottery wins reveal about the gender gap

The UK has seen a rapid increase in self-employed workers over the last two decades, but only one-third are women. Sarah Flèche and colleagues analyse data on lottery winners to show that improving women's access to capi...Read more...

Sarah Fleche, Anthony Lepinteur and Nattavudh Powdthavee

22 February 2022

CentrePiece article
India: the economic impact of Covid-19

India has been hit hard by the pandemic, particularly during the second wave of the virus in the spring of 2021. Swati Dhingra and Maitreesh Ghatak reveal how the largest drop in GDP in the country's history may still un...Read more...

Swati Dhingra and Maitreesh Ghatak

22 February 2022

CentrePiece article
Football, alcohol and domestic abuse

Reports of domestic abuse rise after football matches. Ria Ivandic, Tom Kirchmaier and Neus Torres-Blas find that binge drinking is the key factor - with alcohol-linked violence against live-in partners happening more of...Read more...

Ria Ivandic, Tom Kirchmaier and Neus Torres-Blas

22 February 2022

CentrePiece article
Happy to help: NHS volunteering in Covid-19 times

The Covid-19 crisis prompted thousands to register as NHS Volunteer Responders, helping vulnerable people with small daily tasks like shopping. Christian Krekel and colleagues find big increases in wellbeing among those ...Read more...

Christian Krekel

15 October 2021

CentrePiece article
In Brief... UK gender pay gap reporting: a crude but effective policy

Forcing employers to reveal their gender pay gap has been effective in its main goal of narrowing the gap, according to research by Jack Blundell who finds the difference between women and men's pay has shrunk by just un...Read more...

Jack Blundell

6 October 2021

CentrePiece article
Poland's economy in the pandemic

The Polish economy has largely managed to avoid the pandemic-induced troubles experienced in Western Europe. But as Pawel Bukowski and Wojtek Paczos argue, contrary to government claims of able stewardship, what has got ...Read more...

Pawel Bukowski and Wojciech Paczos

15 October 2021

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