Patient care in many healthcare systems consists of two phases of service: assessment (or triage) and treatment. It is sometimes the case that these phases are carried out by the same medical providers. We consider the question of how to prioritize the work by the medical providers to balance...

Best practice suggests that modular enterprise architectures, where interfaces among business processes and services are standardized, are a key IT capability for firms to achieve profitable growth. According to recent research by Ross, Weill and, Robertson, firms must progress through four...

This article explains how ONS successfully measured prices for the consumer price indices following the temporary reduction in the rate of VAT from 17.5 per cent to 15 per cent from 1 December 2008. It became more difficult to measure prices because in December 2008 many shops lowered their till...

Assessing a country's competitiveness routinely starts with an analysis of the real exchange rate. However, in low-income countries, empirical analysis of the real exchange rate is often subject to important limitations that seriously weaken the results. This paper summarizes the methodologies...

This paper examines the impact of the 2003-05 oil price increase on the balance of payments positions and IMF financing needs of low-income country oil importers. It finds that stronger exports reflecting favorable global conditions, a compression of oil import volumes due to the pass-through of...