In the Autumn 2011 edition of CentrePiece:

In this edition:

Big ideas: Innovation policy

In the last CentrePiece, John Van Reenen stressed the importance of competition and labour market flexibility for productivity growth. His latest in CEP's 'big ideas' series describes the impact of research on how policy... Read more...

In brief... Cotton and cars: the huge gains from process innovation

New inventions are good for economic growth, but equally important are improvements in the way we make things - what's known as process innovation. Tim Leunig and Joachim Voth measure the impact of two such innovations -... Read more...

Football matches: the effects on crime

The heavy police presence at football matches in England has reduced hooliganism in the stadium - but at what cost in terms of both policying budgets and under-protected places elsewhere in the neighbourhood? Olivier Mar... Read more...

Young people without qualifications: how 'headline numbers' shape policy and aspiration

England's most widely used indicator of young people's education and labour market status is the NEET category - 'not in education, employment or training'. Making comparisons with how France and Germany measure school l... Read more...

In brief... House prices and school quality: evidence from state and private education in Paris

It is now widely understood that the quality of state schools in a neighbourhood has an impact on local house prices. Analysing data for Paris, Gabrielle Fack and Julien Grenet have looked deeper into this link by explor... Read more...

The boom in postgraduate education and its impact on wage inequality

Growing numbers of university students in Britain and the United States are staying on after their first degrees to invest in a postgraduate qualification. Joanne Lindley and Stephen Machin document this trend and assess... Read more...

Teachers' pay and pupil performance

If you pay peanuts, do you get monkeys? If teachers were better paid and higher up the national income distribution, would there be an improvement in pupil performance? Peter Dolton and Oscar Marcenaro-Gutierrez examine ... Read more...

Unequal Britain: how real are regional disparities?

Average earnings vary widely across the regions of Britain, a fact that has prompted many decades of policies aimed at reducing regional disparities. But as Henry Overman and Steve Gibbons demonstrate, such variation rev... Read more...

The future of work in Europe

Employment in the European Union is still falling short of the objectives set by the continent's leaders more than 10 years ago. Nobel laureate Chris Pissarides explains why Europe remains behind the United States in job... Read more...