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David Blanchflower and Richard Freeman, "Why Youth Unemployment Will be Hard to Reduce" Unemployment has long been one of Europe's biggest economic headaches: the experience in most European countries differs markedly from that of the United States. Yet the employment problems of young people in Europe have much in common with those in other industrial countries. Their research suggests there are no quick fixes on offer. Alice Nakamura and Ging Wong, "Rethinking Our National Stay-in-School Rhetoric" Stay-in-school strategies, in vogue across Canada, are inadvertently undermining the processes by which young people come to assume adult roles and responsibilities in society. They also needlessly devalue the careers and societal contributions of millions of mature adults. Philip Jennings, "School Enrolment and the Declining Youth Participation Rate" The author looks at the factors behind the declining participation rate of youth in the labour market. The increase in school enrolment is found to account for about half of the decline in youth labour force participation. The falling participation in the labour market by students and non-students alike accounts for a further 38% and 11 percent respectively. Derek Holt, "Will the Future Remain Bleak for Today's Youths?" A number of factors suggest that the employment and earnings difficulties currently being experienced by youth will not endure. Today's youth will benefit from demographic trends, from a growing fiscal dividend and from two future inheritance waves. It would, therefore, be inappropriate to introduce employment and other policies that discriminate in favour of youths. Michel-Henri Gensbittel, "Le chômage des jeunes en France" Sorry, the summary of this article is not available. Patrick Werquin, "La politique de l'emploi des jeunes en France" Sorry, the summary of this article is not available. Jeffrey Smith, "Can Public Job Training Reduce Youth Unemployment?" Publicly funded job training programs constitute an important part of many proposals for increasing employment among disadvantaged youth. Evidence from major recent evaluations of several such programs indicates that even very expensive programs are unlikely to have a major impact on employment rates for this group. This evidence suggests the importance of downsizing or redesigning existing youth training programs and the potential value of pursuing alternative employment strategies. Julie White and Diane Goulet, "Contemplating the Four-Day Week: Lessons from Bell Canada" The authors advocate a shorter work week as a way of reducing unemployment. To support this policy prescription, they scrutinize the shorter work week experiment undertaken recently at Bell Canada. The problems were that experiment were a function of the way it was implemented and should not be taken as proof that other, appropriately improved shorter work week programs, would fail. David Osborne and Peter Plastrik, "Banishing Bureaucracy" Success in reinventing public organizations depends of five key strategies: a core strategy to help create clarity of purpose; a consequences strategy to introduce consequences for performance; a customer strategy to make public organizations accountable to their customers; a control strategy to empower organizations and their employees to innovate; and, a culture strategy to change the habits, hearts and minds of public employees. Jey Shelton, "The Pacific Salmon Treaty: An Alaskan Perspective" The author outlines Alaska's position with respect to Pacific Salmon Treaty and contrasts that analysis with elements central to Canada's approach. His restricted focus responds to the fact that virtually every public statement in Canada concerning the Treaty points to the conduct of Alaskan fisheries as the source of never-ending dissatisfaction in Canada with Treaty performance. Not surprisingly, a very different assessment of the Treaty and its functioning prevails in Alaska. That perspective clearly has not attained wide distribution in Canada. Nelson Wiseman, "National Unity: Recovering Our Non-Declaratory Tradition" The author urges Canadians, and Canada's political leaders in particular, to give up efforts to define what Canada is in some formal constitutional declaration. Canada has worked not because of what is in its Constitution but despite it. Canada has been sufficiently flexible and pragmatic to accommodate our complex and sometimes contradictory realities. It is the attempt to formally define ourselves that divides and risks destroying this country. J.A.A. Lovink, "Run-off Elections is the Electoral Reform Canada Needs" There are advantages and disadvantages to the many electoral reform proposals that were advocated in the November1997 Policy Options on electoral reform. The author argues that the missing solution is run-off elections. Run-off elections would add substantially to the democratic legitimacy of Canada's legislatures without having any negative effects on the effectiveness and accountability of government. Peter Aucoin and Jennifer Smith, "PR and Equality: There is no Guarantee" Sorry, the summary of this article is not available. |
