In the Summer 2015 edition of CentrePiece:

In this edition:

Crime scars: can recessions produce career criminals?

Recessions typically raise youth unemployment and leave longterm labour market `scars? on the young people concerned. Research by Brian Bell, Anna Bindler and Stephen Machin finds that they also have a disturbing and sub... Read more...

Family business: management effort and firm performance

Might familyowned, familyrun firms be a serious obstacle to productivity growth in Europe? Oriana Bandiera, Andrea Prat and Raffaella Sadun have collected time use data on over 1,000 chief executive officers to explore d... Read more...

In brief... American Idol: 65 years of admiration

Every year for over half a century, the US opinion pollsters Gallup have asked Americans to say which person they most admire. Alan Manning and Amar Shanghavi consider what their answers reveal about how public attitudes... Read more...

In brief... Phone home: should mobiles be banned in schools?

Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy look at the impact of mobile phone bans on pupils' academic achievement in four cities in England. Read more...

Robots at work: the impact on productivity and jobs

Robots may seem dangerous not only to cinema action heroes but also to the average manufacturing worker.To assess whether such concerns are well founded, Guy Michaels and Georg Graetz analyse the labour market effects of... Read more...

In brief... Making a difference in education

A new book by Sandra McNally and colleagues surveys the evidence on which policies and practices are working in UK schools. Read more...

Happier workers, higher profits

Alex Bryson and colleagues find that UK employees' job satisfaction is positively associated with workplace financial performance. Read more...

In brief... A Global Apollo Programme to tackle climate change

Leading thinkers across the worlds of science, public service and academia have launched a new global programme to combat climate change. Richard Layard outlines their proposal for big public investment in research that ... Read more...

In brief... Oil: the impact on women's work

Stephan Maurer and Andrei Potlogea explore whether oil-dominated economies are naturally biased against women's labour market participation. Read more...

The path from cause to effect: mastering 'metrics

How should researchers interested in social and economic policy untangle cause and effect? A new book by Joshua Angrist and Jorn Steffen Pischke shows how the five core econometric tools -randomised trials, regression, ... Read more...