East of the “Iron Curtain”: Why Did Post-Communist Countries Join NATO?

Mental health in post-communist countries.

Massive political, economic, and social changes in eastern and central Europe since the 1990s have created conditions of instability and stress, which are associated with troubling trends in health. Severe economic constraints after the collapse of the former Soviet Union followed by patchy economic growth have contributed to marked inequalities in income and social upheaval. These changes have...

Market efficiency of the Post Communist East European stock markets

The stock markets from Post Communist East-European Countries are still considered highly speculative. For this reason, the previously performed tests often infirmed the efficient market hypothesis. However, especially in the past years, different studies revealed an improvement in the level of efficiency. In this context, our paper has tested the predictability of returns based on past records...

Did mass privatisation really increase post-communist mortality?

In this document, we describe more fully the methods and results summarized in our letter to The Lancet. We begin by presenting our replication of the cross-country analysis reported in Stuckler, King, and McKee (henceforth SKM). We then proceed to an alternative research design, where we explore the relationship between privatisation and mortality across Russian regions. Finally, we revisit th...

Hepcidin: inflammation's iron curtain.

Editorial Hepcidin: inflammation's iron curtain Rheumatologists and their patients are the beneficiaries of a recently identified peptide, hepcidin (Table 1). Isolated from human urine and plasma in the year 2000 [1, 2], hepcidin appears to be the long-sought iron-regulatory hormone responsible for the anaemia of chronic disease [3, 4]. It is more than that: it is an acute-phase reactant, respo...

a Post - Communist Society