The Debate about Mandatory Retirement in Ontario Universities: Positive and Personal Choices about Retirement at 65

The debate about mandatory retirement is fundamentally a moral issue, about human rights, but one strongly related to several major economic issues. Mandatory retirement is a form of age discrimination that seems to be strictly prohibited by section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights. But the Charter provides an important qualification: in that ‘it guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society’. That provision was cited in the majority decision of the Supreme Court of December 1990, known as McKinney v University of Guelph, which upheld the right of Ontario (and other Canadian) universities to impose mandatory retirement at 65, if not otherwise constrained by provincial legislation. The reasons that the majority cited to explain this decision bear directly upon important economic issues; and this paper seeks to refute all those arguments, chiefly if not exclusively on economic grounds. The first set of arguments were those contending that mandatory retirement, in a supposedly ‘closed’ system of Canadian universities, is necessary to open employment and promotion opportunities for younger workers, with fresher, more innovative ‘new blood’, i.e., by forcing academics to leave at 65 (an argument akin to one used in the past against employing females: on the grounds that they took jobs from ‘male family-breadwinners’). This basically involves the still widely held ‘lump of labour fallacy’; and it is refuted by not only economic logic but by the historical evidence from jurisdictions that have abolished mandatory retirement in full: Quebec, from 1983 (the only Canadian province so far to do so); and the United States, from 1994. Various studies now demonstrate that an end to mandatory retirement has encouraged very few to continue past the normal age of retirement, has not appreciably altered the average age of retirement, and has had no discernible consequences for the employment and advancement of much younger faculty. The second related Supreme Court argument was that mandatory retirement is necessary to obviate the need to monitor productivity in order to dismiss unproductive elderly faculty, and thus also to protect tenure (to guarantee academic freedom). This paper argues that performance monitoring is a normal feature of academic life in major North American universities; that there is no evidence that academic productivity declines with, and only with, the onset of the 60s; that in jurisdictions without mandatory retirement none of the predicted adverse consequences has taken place; and that tenure remains intact. The third argument concerns the validity of freely-negotiated labour contracts, containing provisions for mandatory retirement. In the case of the University of Toronto and many other Ontario universities, this paper demonstrates that mandatory retirement was imposed unilaterally, without negotiated contracts; but the paper also discusses the nature, and economic rationale, of such contracts that involve the suppression of individual rights in the presumed favour of the majority (if and when freely negotiated). The paper also addresses labour union concerns to protect normal retirement benefits at 65 (when most do wish to retire). The paper also considers two other economic issues not considered by the Supreme Court: (1) mandatory retirement as an employment tool to ensure greater diversity of Canadian faculty – and thus whether one may engage in one form of discrimination to combat the presumed consequences of another; and (2) mandatory retirement as a fiscal necessity, when government grants have been shrinking. Quite clearly universities do gain by rehiring forcibly retired academics to do stipendiary teaching (making a mockery of their reasons for mandatory retirement). Against this is set the costs of mandatory retirement: in promoting the flow of some productive and renowned faculty to the US; or in encouraging productive senior faculty to seek alternative employment in Canada; and in hindering (or even preventing) the recruitment of renowned senior faculty from jurisdictions that prohibit mandatory retirement.labour, the Canadian Charter of Rights, Supreme Court, age discrimination, university employment, diversity in employment, productivity, tenure, collective bargaining, contracts, individual and collective rights, retirement, pensions, university financing.

Builders' Wages in Southern England and the Southern Low Countries, 1346 -1500:A Comparative Study of Trends in and Levels of Real Incomes

The traditional and almost universal method of expressing real wages is by index numbers, according to the formula: RWI = NWI/CPI: i.e., the real wage is the quotient of the nominal (money) wage index divided by the consumer price index, all employing a common base period (here: 1451-75 = 100). This method is very useful in comparing long-term trends, and in ascertaining whether changes in nominal (money) wages or changes in the price level were paramount in determining changes in real wages. But it does not permit us to make any judgements about the levels of real wages and thus does not permit us to make comparisons of real wages amongst different regions. This paper presents a new method of presenting and comparing real wages, and one that may also be independent of any common base period. This particular paper compares the actual changing levels of real wages for building craftsmen and their journeymenlabourers in southern England, Flanders, and Brabant, in the late medieval era (1346-1500): and the real wage is expressed here as the number of very similar 'baskets of consumables' that a craftsmen and his journeyman could each purchase with his annual money wage income, based on 210 days of employment each year. Using the working papers for Phelps Brown & Hopkins' very famous price and real-wage indexes for England (1264-1954), which were presented only in disembodied index numbers, I was able to compute the annual values of all commodities in their 'basket of consumables' and thus the total value in pence sterling. Herman Van der Wee had constructed a price-index for the Antwerp region (1400-1700), with annual values in pence groot Brabant (but still converted into index numbers); and I have produced a similar price index for Flanders (1348-1500), with annual values in pence groot Flemish. All three baskets have very similar contents. All wages and prices are expressed in terms of quinquennial (five-year) harmonic means The results of this comparative analysis are best expressed in the nine graphs that accompany this paper. But some brief conclusions may be stated here. First (as I had contended in two recent articles) the Black Death did not usher in a 'golden age of the labourer' in either England or Flanders, but was instead followed by a quarter century of falling real wages, because rampant inflation erased and countered the gains in nominal (money) wages. Real wages rose in the very late 14th and early 15th century because of a combination of institutional wage-stickiness and deflation. In the Low Countries, beset with war-induced and very inflationary coinage debasements, real wages again fell until the late 1430s, rising thereafter only with monetary stability, deflation, and 'wage-stickiness'; but then falling once more from the 1460s, because of warfare and debasement-induced inflations (to the 1490s). This evidence refutes the almost universally accepted axiom that the real wage is determined entirely by the marginal revenue product of labour. I do not, however, completely rule out the role of changes in productivity, though I offer the hypothesis that regional differences in Total Factor Productivity (and some degree of factor immobility) must be called upon to explain marked differences in real wages. The most striking difference is that, at the time of the Black Death, real wages for master building craftsmen in southern England were only a third of those enjoyed by master craftsmen in Bruges; but by the 1480s, when inflation was far more serious in Flanders than in England, that gap had narrowed to just about 80 percent of that for the Bruges craftsmen, still the best paid in north-west Europe. In Bruges, the craftsmen's journeymen did not fare as well, however, earning only half the master's wage, while the English journeymen came to earn two-thirds of their masters' wage by the 15th century -- and sometimes, during periods of severe debasement-induced inflations in Flanders, the English journeyman's real wage was slightly higher than that for his Bruges counterpart. In general, English building craftsmen fared better than their counterparts in Antwerp, earning somewhat less in the early 15th century, but more in the last third of the century, when inflations from severe coinage debasements again reduced real wages in the Low Countries.prices, price-indexes, wage-indexes, nominal and real wages, wage-stickiness, coinage, debasements, relative prices, inflations, deflations, building craftsmen, journey-men labourers, England, Flanders, Brabant, Antwerp

Spanish Merino Wools and the Nouvelles Draperies: An Industrial Transformation in the Late-Medieval Low Countries

This paper, a much revised version of an earlier paper (with different tables), seeks to explain why Spanish merino wools arrived so late in the Low Countries, only from the 1420s, why initially only those cloth producers known as the nouvelles draperies chose to use them, and why their resort to such merino wools allowed at least some of them to escape the current crisis afflicting the traditional 'old draperies', and indeed to expand to become the chief producers of woollen cloths in the southern Low Countries during the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Although the merino have been by far the world’s finest wools, since at least the seventeenth century, English wools had enjoyed that supremacy in the medieval era. The Spanish sheep breeds that produced the first merino wools did not emerge until or after the 1340s; and it took many decades of experimental breeding and improved flock management to produce better quality wools in sufficient quantities for export (first to Italy). Before the introduction of merinos, the indigenous Spanish sheep had produced some of the worst wools in Europe. In the thirteenth century, they were used only in making very cheap, coarse, light cloths, when north-west Europe was producing a wide range of textiles, from such coarse light generally worsted-style fabrics to the most luxurious woollens. For reasons that I have elaborated elsewhere, the onset of a spreading stain of chronic and debilitating wars, from the 1290s, throughout the Mediterranean basin and north-west Europe, resulted in a sharp rise in transaction costs that made long-distance trade in cheaper textiles unprofitable. Consequently, by the 1330s, most north-west European draperies had abandoned export-oriented production of cheaper line textiles to concentrate on very high priced luxury woollens, those that could so much better 'bear the freight'. Furthermore, in Flanders, a considerable number of small-town and village producers engaged in precisely the same industrial re-orientation; but in producing genuine heavy weight woollens, they sought to imitate those of the large Flemish towns; and, in selling their cloths at lower prices, came to be known as the nouvelles draperies. This industrial reorientation meant that cloth producers in the Low Countries became all the more reliant on English wools, above all the traditional urban draperies (who came to use such wools exclusively). The English crown was quick to exploit this dependency by sharply raising export taxes, which, by the 1390s, constituted half of the sales price; and that in turn accounted for up to 70 percent of production costs in the Low Countries' urban draperies. Meanwhile, English cloth exports, very lightly taxed, gained an enormous cost and thus price advantage, but one not fully exploited until the fifteenth century. The catalyst for the final economic crisis, one that brought about the irredeemable decline of most of the urban draperies in the Low Countries, and the expansion of the nouvelles draperies, took place from 1429 to 1473, when the English crown sought to exploit the wool trade even further, in pursuing ill-advised bullionist policies: by requiring that the Calais Staple wool cartel sharply raise prices, that it seel all wools only for 'ready English money' without credit, and that it deliver one third of the sales receipts to the mint in gold bullion. Not until the 1470s did the Burgundians succeed in having these bullionist ordinances revoked. Meanwhile the traditional Flemish and Brabantine draperies, in continuing to use such high-cost English wools exclusively, for fear of losing customers, ensured their own rapid decline, indeed losing markets to both the English cloth trade and the nouvelles draperies, who also acquired considerable capital and labour from the declining draperies. Their success, as less quality-conscious imitators, lay in their willingness to use the far cheaper but now improved Spanish wools. An historic prejudice against pre-merino Spanish wools probably explains whey even they had not used these wools before the onset of this crisis. Having displaced the traditional draperies, the nouvelles draperies reached their apogee in the 1540s, when they were superseded by the sayetteries, after international market conditions had once more favoured longdistance trade in truly cheaper, light textiles.wool, cloth, woollen, worsteds, sheep-breeding and management, the Nouvelles Draperies, sayetteries, Old Draperies, industrial organization, taxation, fiscal policies, monetary policies, transaction costs, cartels, Calais Staple, England, Spain, Flanders, the Low Countries, the Mediterranean, the Hanseatic League.

Three Centuries of Luxury Textile Consumption in the Low Countries and England, 1330 - 1570: New Methodologies for Estimating Changes in Real Values

This study is a much revised and extended version of two previously issued working papers on the production, sale, and consumption of woollen textiles in England and the Low Countries, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. It focuses on the hey-day of the production and international trade in heavy-weight, very high quality, luxury woollen broadcloths (Flemish and English), during these three centuries. From the 1290s to the 1460s, as I have argued in earlier publications, the consequences of widespread international warfare, and the consequent dislocations to major trading routes, the sharp rise in transportation and transaction costs, and taxation, combined with disruptive coinage debasements and various trade barriers, and drastic declines in population (from plagues and warfare) produced major transformations in the international trade and production of textiles: a relative shift from cheaper line textiles (whose producers were price-takers) to very high priced luxury textiles — silks and woollens (whose producers were price-makers). Table 1 provides the wool compositions, dimensions, and weights of the various textiles. The major concern of this study is to estimate changes in the ‘real’ value of luxury woollen over these three centuries, especially for the longest price series: for the Ghent dickedinnen broadcloths, from the 1330s to the 1570s. The available price data are, of course, in current money-of-account: the pond groot of Flanders. Because of the chronic coinage debasement that afflicted this era, we cannot use current prices. Thus, for example, in the two centuries from 1350 to 1550, the quantity of fine silver in the Flemish penny or groot was reduced, in both fineness and weight, from 2.067 grams to 0.474 g – an overall reduction of 77.1 percent; and by 1580, that quantity had fallen to just 0.300 g. Most historians have sought a false remedy for this problem of coinage debasement: to estimate ‘real’ prices in terms of ‘silver equivalents’, i.e., the quantity of fine silver represented in the current circulating silver penny and thus in the penny (1d) of the money-of-account. Why this method is fallacious (in several respects) is a major aspect of this paper. Instead, three alternative methods of estimating real values over time have been utilized. The first is a method similar to the common calculation of real wages (NWI/CPI = RWI): that is, using a common base period of 1451-75 for all prices, I have calculated price indexes for all the textiles (Flemish and English) in this study; and I have then divided that index by the Consumer Price Indexes for Flanders, Brabant, and England (Table 18). If the textile price index rose more than did the CPI, its real value had also risen. The second and related method does not involve index numbers, but a comparison of the market values of the three ‘baskets of consumables’ with those of the textiles: the number of such ‘baskets of consumables’ whose market value equalled the value of each of the luxury woollen broadcloths under consideration, over these three centuries. The third method involves the purchasing power of labour: using my own tabulations of daily money wages for master masons and carpenters in the leading towns of Flanders, Brabant, and England, over these centuries, I have calculated the number of days’ wages that a master mason would have required to buy a unit of these textiles, over these three centuries. For any short period, such as that given in Table 2 (1535-44), comparing values of woollens and worsteds, all three methods provide the same results. But over the longue durée of this study, from the 1330s to the 1570s, these methods often produce differing results: for sometimes the real values of these textiles in terms of masons’ wages rose, while their values in terms of commodity baskets fell. The explanation for such a divergence is that the MRP of labour and the purchasing power of masons’s wages did not change in accordances with changes in the real values of the commodities in the ‘baskets of consumables’. The study ends by demonstrating the enormous differences in the purchasing power of modern-day building craftsmen with that of sixteenth-century craftsmen – and the sharp fall in the percentage shares of textiles and foodstuffs in the consumer price indexes, then and now (i.e., in Canada, in 2008).wool, woollens, worsteds, luxury goods, masons, nominal and real wages, price indexes

Geometric multipartite entanglement measures

Within the framework of constructions for quantifying entanglement, we build a natural scenario for the assembly of multipartite entanglement measures based on Hopf bundle-like mappings obtained through Clifford algebra representations. Then, given the non-factorizability of an arbitrary two-qubit density matrix, we give an alternate quantity that allows the construction of two types of entanglement measures based on their arithmetical and geometrical averages over all pairs of qubits in a register of size N, and thus fully characterize its degree and type of entanglement. We find that such an arithmetical average is both additive and strongly super additive.Comment: This is the updated, finally published, versio

4-[(E)-2-Ferrocenylethen­yl]-1,8-naphthalic anhydride

In the structure of the title compound, [Fe(C5H5)(C19H11O3)], the plane of the substituted ferrocene ring is tilted by 14.17 (6)° with respect to the mean plane through the naphthalene ring system. In the crystal structure, centrosymmetric dimers are formed through π–π inter­actions [centroid–centroid distance = 3.624 (2) Å] between the substituted ferrocene ring and the three fused rings of the naphthalic anhydride unit. Pairs of dimers are held together by further naphthalene–naphthalene π–π interactions [distance between parallel mean planes 3.45 (3) Å]. Each dimer inter­acts with four neighbouring dimers in a herringbone fashion through C—H⋯π inter­actions, so forming a two-dimensional sheet-like structure

Principals' reports of adults' alcohol use in Australian secondary schools

Background - Schools provide opportunities for parents and the wider community to connect and support the physical and emotional wellbeing of their children. Schools therefore have the potential to play a role in the socialisation of alcohol use through school policies and practices regarding consumption of alcohol by adults at school events in the presence of children. Methods - This survey was undertaken to a) compare the extent to which alcohol is used at secondary school events, when children are present, in the states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria (VIC), Australia; b) describe principals’ level of agreement with these practices; c) their awareness of state policies on this issue; and d) the predictors of such events. A random sample of secondary schools, stratified to represent metropolitan and non-metropolitan schools were invited to participate. Bivariate and multivariate analysis were conducted with p values < 0.05 considered significant. Results - A total of 241 (43 %) schools consented to participate in the study. Fifteen percent of participating NSW schools and 57 % of VIC schools held at least one event in which alcohol was consumed by adults in the presence of children in the year before the survey. Of the 100 reported events, 78 % were Year 12 graduation dinners, and 18 % were debutante balls. Compared to NSW principals, VIC principals were significantly more likely to agree with the use of alcohol at these events; significantly less likely to be aware of their state education department policy on this issue; have a policy at their own school or support policy that prohibits alcohol use at such events; and less likely to report having enough Information to make decisions about this. Conclusions - There is a growing focus on adults’ use of alcohol at school events when children are present. Schools can play an important role in educating and socialising children about alcohol via both the curriculum and policies regarding adults’ alcohol use at school events. Findings from this study suggest education department and school-based policies that prohibit or restrict the use of alcohol, are significant predictors of adults’ alcohol use at school events when children are present

Effectiveness of a guided self-help manual in strengthening resilience in people diagnosed with moderate depression and their family caregivers in Thailand: a randomised controlled trial

The growing incidence of depression in developing countries, such as Thailand, is placing increasing pressure on public mental health services, and those living in rural areas have limited access to mental health services and specialised support. Resilience is integral to the recovery of people with depression and to caregivers. This parallel group randomised controlled trial evaluated the effectiveness of a guided self-help manual in improving resilience in adults diagnosed with moderate depression and their primary caregivers in Thailand. Our findings indicate that the approach is an accessible and low-cost approach to increasing resilience in adults with depression and their caregivers

CB1 Expression Is Attenuated in Fallopian Tube and Decidua of Women with Ectopic Pregnancy

BACKGROUND: Embryo retention in the Fallopian tube (FT) is thought to lead to ectopic pregnancy (EP), a considerable cause of morbidity. In mice, genetic/pharmacological silencing of cannabinoid receptor Cnr1, encoding CB1, causes retention of embryos in the oviduct. The role of the endocannabinoids in tubal implantation in humans is not known. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Timed FT biopsies (n = 18) were collected from women undergoing gynecological procedures for benign conditions. Endometrial biopsies and whole blood were collected from women undergoing surgery for EP (n = 11); management of miscarriage (n = 6), and termination of pregnancy (n = 8). Using RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry, CB1 mRNA and protein expression levels/patterns were examined in FT and endometrial biopsies. The distribution of two polymorphisms of CNR1 was examined by TaqMan analysis of genomic DNA from the whole blood samples. In normal FT, CB1 mRNA was higher in luteal compared to follicular-phase (p<0.05). CB1 protein was located in smooth muscle of the wall and of endothelial vessels, and luminal epithelium of FT. In FT from women with EP, CB1 mRNA expression was low. CB1 mRNA expression was also significantly lower (p<0.05) in endometrium of women with EP compared to intrauterine pregnancies (IUP). Although of 1359G/A (rs1049353) polymorphisms of CNR1 gene suggests differential distribution of genotypes between the small, available cohorts of women with EP and those with IUP, results were not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: CB1 mRNA shows temporal variation in expression in human FT, likely regulated by progesterone. CB1 mRNA is expressed in low levels in both the FT and endometrium of women with EP. We propose that aberrant endocannabinoid-signaling in human FT leads to EP. Furthermore, our finding of reduced mRNA expression along with a possible association between polymorphism genotypes of the CNR1 gene and EP, suggests a possible genetic predisposition to EP that warrants replication in a larger sample pool