Hospital operating theatres are a critical but costly resource in healthcare processes. Their efficiency and utilisation impact upon hospital finances, clinical effectiveness and patient outcomes. Operations management techniques have now been applied widely to optimise flow. An important...

We estimate the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on business failures among small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in seventeen countries using a large representative firm-level database. We use a simple model of firm cost minimization and measure each firm’s liquidity shortfall during and...

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Women more often than men take care of their ageing relatives together with their own children or grandchildren. These Sandwich Generation (SG) women constitute an expanding vulnerable group on the labour market...

This book considers how a wide range of policies, including tax/benefit policies, childcare policy, and employment and workplace practices help determine parental labour market outcomes and may impinge on family formation and ultimately the current and future labour supply. It covers Canada (in...

This book examines the performance of social assistance policies in four countries with similar per capita incomes: Australia, Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. It confronts their -- very different -- social protection systems and sheds light on issues such as social insurance and social...

The report links the results from the OECD PISA 2000 survey to qualitative evidence on important public policy measures in six countries that performed well in PISA. These measures included strategies for educational reform and innovation; issues of governance and resource allocation; national...