Eliminating the Barriers to Employment Equity in the Canadian Workplace

Have employment equity programs achieved the goal of equity for women in the workplace? We argue that they have not because gender stereotypes still persist. In fact, they may have created resentment and antagonism towards successful women and employment equity initiatives. Arguments are developed for the Canadian government to create a self-regulating system, in which the government plays a role of educator as opposed to monitor.     

What really works

When it comes to improving business performance, managers have no shortage of tools and techniques to choose from. But what really works? What's critical, and what's optional? Two business professors and a former McKinsey consultant set out to answer those questions. In a ground-breaking, five-year study that involved more than 50 academics and consultants, the authors analyzed 200 management techniques as they were employed by 160 companies over ten years. Their findings at a high level? Business basics really matter. In this article, the authors outline the management practices that are imperative for sustained superior financial performance--their "4+2 formula" for business success. They provide examples of companies that achieved varying degrees of success depending on whether they applied the formula, and they suggest ways that other companies can achieve excellence. The 160 companies in their study--called the Evergreen Project--were divided into 40 quads, each comprising four companies in a narrowly defined industry. Based on its performance between 1986 and 1996, each company in each quad was classified as either a winner (for instance, Dollar General), a loser (Kmart), a climber (Target), or a tumbler (the Limited). Without exception, the companies that outperformed their industry peers excelled in what the authors call the four primary management practices: strategy, execution, culture, and structure. And they supplemented their great skill in those areas with a mastery of any two of four secondary management practices: talent, leadership, innovation, and mergers and partnerships. A company that consistently follows this 4+2 formula has a better than 90% chance of sustaining superior performance, according to the authors.     

Policy Assignments for Central Bank Activities

This paper contrasts different policy assignments for central bank operations. Two types of asset market transactions (domestic, foreign) and two policy targets (interest rate, exchange rate) are examined within a portfolio-balance model. It is demonstrated that assigning domestic asset transactions to the internal target, and foreign asset transactions to the external target, produces stable policy paths, while the opposite assignment does not. [310]     

Patterns of care and burden of chronic idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura in Brazil

Aims: Although several therapeutic options are available for chronic immune thrombocytopenic purpura (cITP), little is known about the treatment of cITP in Brazil.

Materials and methods: A multi-center, retrospective chart review, observational study was designed to describe the treatment patterns, clinical burden, resources use, and associated costs for adult patients diagnosed with cITP and treated in public and private institutions in Brazil. Patient charts were screened in reverse chronological order based on their last visit post January 1, 2012. (All costs were calculated using 1.00 USD?=?3.9571 BRL, from February 2016.)

Results: Of 340 patient charts screened, 50 patients were eligible for inclusion in the study. Single-drug therapy (prednisone, dexamethasone, or dapsone) was the most commonly used treatment, followed by combination therapies (azathioprine?+?prednisone, azathioprine?+?prednisone?+?danazol, and prednisone?+?dapsone). Splenectomy was performed in 22% of patients after at least first-line treatment. Platelet count and number of bleeding episodes at diagnosis were 31,561.1/mm³ (SD?=?±26,396.1) and 40 episodes, respectively; in first-line, 92,631.1/mm³ (SD?=?±79,955.3) and 19 episodes, respectively; in second-line, 96,950.0/mm³ (SD?=?±76,476.4) and 17 episodes, respectively. Private system patients had a higher median cost compared to public system patients (USD 17.49/month, range?=?0–2,020.77 vs USD 9.51/month, range?=?0–192.64, respectively).

Limitations: This study does not allow conclusions for causal explanations due to the cohort study design, and treatment patterns represent only the practices of physicians who have agreed to participate in the study.

Conclusions: The data indicate that available therapeutic strategies for second- and third-line therapies appear to be limited.     

基于土地出让行为的地方政府竞争与经济增长

本文利用2004～2009年中国地级及以上城市的面板数据,实证分析了地方政府通过土地价格竞争和土地财政支出竞争两种方式吸引投资、促进增长的策略,评估了两种策略在全国和地区尺度上的实施效果及其区域差异。研究发现,在全国尺度上,土地价格竞争和土地财政支出竞争两种手段都对城市经济增长产生了显著的促进作用。地区层面的进一步分析发现,土地价格竞争的经济增长效应主要体现在中部地区,而土地财政支出竞争则在东部和西部地区对经济增长有显著的影响。     

Sustainable development of agricultural systems: competing objectives and critical limits

The sustainability of agricultural systems has become a major focus for debates about future human survival. Much of the argument appears to rely on simplistic interpretation of ecological models, and fails adequately to define what sustainability objectives are being sought. We explore the implications of two alternative approaches to agricultural sustainability: the Critical Limits view which would require future farming systems to accept the ecosystem-imposed limits on the number of people in the world and the lifestyle they can enjoy; and the Competing Objectives view would balance agricultural sustainability with economic viability, reduction of environmental harm and fulfilling public demands for food and landscape benefits. The development of farming systems of the future will depend on which of these views is adopted by planners and policy makers.This paper challenges some of the ecological assumptions underlying the Critical Limits approach and questions the conventional view that extensive farming systems are more sustainable agriculturally than intensive systems. We may be able to deal more effectively with the environmental side effects of intensive farming systems by treating them as unwanted externalities and taking direct action to avoid or remove them rather than attempting to change fundamentally the nature of modern farming systems.To cope with the increasingly complexity and inter-connectedness of modern farming systems in the context of globalisation and potential perturbations like climate change, we need a pluralistic approach to policy, which can cope with the high levels of uncertainty in these areas and which allows maximum flexibility of response to changing circumstances.