In the Winter 2006 edition of CentrePiece:

In this edition:

Trade liberalisation and the market for corporate control

We know that freer trade between countries usually increases efficiency by reallocating resources from less productive plants to more productive plants. Holger Breinlich finds that it can also have a significant impact o... Read more...

The educational impact of parental choice and school competition

A central focus of current education policy is to expand parents' choice over where their children go to school and to promote competition between schools. A long-running CEP research programme by Stephen Gibbons, Stephe... Read more...

In brief... Britain's minimum wage: what impact on pay and jobs?

The national minimum wage is now an established part of the British labour market. In the first evaluation of all the evidence of its impact on pay and jobs, David Metcalf shows that there has been a big boost in the pay... Read more...

Shifts in economic geography and their causes

Why are economic activity and prosperity spread so unevenly, and does globalisation necessarily narrow these differences? Tony Venables outlines the key forces driving the economic geography of cities, nations and the wo... Read more...

In brief... Bosnia: the labour market costs of conflict

The last issue of CentrePiece reported research by Florence Kondylis on the costs of conflict-induced migration for individual households in Rwanda. In this issue, she explores similar questions for people displaced and ... Read more...

Japan's shareholder revolution

Over the past decade or so, there has been a fundamental change in what the managers of Japanese companies believe are their key objectives. Ronald Dore traces the country?s conversion to Anglo-Saxon capitalism - and gro... Read more...

In brief... Fat city: does urban sprawl lead to human sprawl?

People who move from compact to sprawling neighbourhoods do not gain weight. Read more...

Technologies to tackle global warming

The Stern Review of the economics of climate change proposes a dramatic increase in public spending on research into carbon-mitigating technologies as well as market-based schemes for trading and taxing pollution. Ralf M... Read more...