In the Winter 2015 edition of CentrePiece:

In this edition:

After communism: 25 years of revolution

A quarter of a century after the transition to a capitalist economy began, how are the nations of the former Soviet bloc faring? Peter Boone charts the failures of communism, the chaos that followed its collapse, the per... Read more...

Long shadow of the Berlin Wall

Do people born at different points of the economic cycle have different outcomes ? and if so, why? Arnaud Chevalier and Olivier Marie examine the educational attainment and criminal activity of children born in East Germ... Read more...

TTIP: is free trade coming to the North Atlantic?

If successfully concluded, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) would be the most ambitious free trade agreement in history. Dennis Novy explains that while the potential benefits from liberalised tr... Read more...

Napoleonic protectionism: how France's cotton industry gained

Can temporary protection from trade with advanced economies foster the development of `infant industries? in developing countries? Reka Juhasz considers a natural experiment: Napoleon?s wartime blockade of British export... Read more...

The dilemma of central bank transparency

If central banks publish the transcripts of their internal policy debates, will discussions be enhanced or inhibited? Michael McMahon and colleagues use tools from computational linguistics to analyse the positive and ne... Read more...

In brief... Business cycle blues

People do not psychologically benefit from economic expansions nearly as much as they suffer from recessions, according to research by JanEmmanuel De Neve and colleagues. Read more...

Educational efficiency: value for money in public spending on schools

Which national education systems deliver the best value for money? Peter Dolton and colleagues rank 30 of the world?s richest countries based on their expenditure on teacher costs (which account for 80% of education budg... Read more...