BACKGROUND Policy makers and health professionals are progressively using evidence-based rationale to guide their decisions. There has long been controversy regarding which maternal position is more appropriate during the first stage of labor. This problem has been examined often and repeatedly and the optimal recommendation remains unclear. METHODS This is a systematic review of the effect o...

The nature of the linkage of education and training systems to the labour market is often claimed to crucially affect labour market integration in modern economies. More specifically, most current comparative research assumes a more strongly qualification-based allocation in training systems allowing for early occupational specialization as compared to more experience-based allocation mechanism...

An allocation model of workers differentiated by their field of study is developed to test whether international differences in the wage structure can be explained by differences in labour demand and supply in each country. The model explicitly takes into account the effects of supply and demand shifts on the allocation structure to disentangle country specific differences in the recruitment fo...

In this paper, the allocation of women’s time to housework and child-care is analysed using data from the 1997 Swiss Labour Force Survey (SLFS). The main aim of this study is to investigate the effect that the level of education has on the allocation of women’s time to non-market labour. It is shown that the usual negative-to-insignificant relationship between the level of education and the all...

_____________________________________________________________________ We ask whether the objective of egalitarian allocation of a merit good could be achieved by making the good available at multiple outlets charging different money and time prices. Differential pricing could separate high and low wage buyers across outlets, and proportional allocation of supply could ensure that consumption is...

A computational model of a simple commodity economy is examined and a theory of the relationship between commodity values, market prices and the efficient division of social labour is developed. The main conclusions are: (i) the labour value of a commodity is an attractor for its market price; (ii) market prices are error signals that function to allocate the available social labour between sec...

BACKGROUND This is one of a series of reviews of methods of cervical ripening and labour induction using standardised methodology. The use of complementary therapies is rising and some women look to complementary therapies during pregnancy and childbirth to be used alongside conventional medical practice. Acupuncture involves the insertion of very fine needles into specific points of the body. ...

The paper addresses the issue of the driving forces behind recent changes in labour market entry outcomes in Europe. Based on data for 12 European countries from the 1988-1997 European Community Labour Force Survey, the empirical analyses estimate panel data models to assess the effects of cyclical changes in aggregate economic conditions, changing youth cohort sizes, increasing educational exp...

BACKGROUND Patient characteristics are modulators of pain experience after acupuncture treatment for chronic pain. Whether this also applies to labour pain is unknown. AIM To examine for associations between maternal characteristics and response to acupuncture in terms of labour pain intensity in close proximity to the treatment (within 60 min) and over a longer time period (up to 240 min), a...