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Σκοπός της συγκεκριμένης εργασίας είναι : · να προσδιορίσει τους παράγοντες που επηρεάζουν την κοινή αγροτική πολιτική, σκιαγραφώντας τη σημαντικότητα και τη βαρύτητα καθενός από αυτούς ξεχωριστά στη χάραξη των νέων μέτρων γεωργικής πρακτικής · να προσεγγίσει το νέο περιβαλλοντικό εργαλείο της πολλαπλής συμμόρφωσης, μέσω του οποίου τα κράτη-μέλη διασφαλίζουν τη βελτίωση των περιβαλλοντικών επιδόσεων της γεωργικής δραστηριότητας · να μελετήσει τη σχέση της πολλαπλής συμμόρφωσης και των αγροπεριβαλλοντικών μέτρων, αναλύοντας τον Πυλώνα 1 και τον Πυλώνα 2 και απαντώντας στο ερώτημα: αγροπεριβαλλοντικά μέτρα ή πολλαπλή συμμόρφωση ή και τα δύο μαζί · να μελετήσει την εφαρμογή της πολλαπλής συμμόρφωσης στην Ελλάδα, προσπαθώντας να εξάγει συμπεράσματα μέσω της διαδικασίας των συνεντεύξεων, από ανθρώπους που χειρίζονται το συγκεκριμένο εργαλείο σε διοικητικό επίπεδο και, από αγρότες που το εφαρμόζουν στην πράξη. Για την πραγματοποίηση του δεύτερου ερευνητικού τμήματος επελέγη η περιοχή της Βοιωτίας. Το γεγονός ότι το χρονικό διάστημα εφαρμογής των νέων μέτρων, που εισήγαγε η νέα ΚΑΠ, είναι πολύ μικρό, κατέστησε την εξαγωγή συμπερασμάτων σε αυτήν την μελέτη αρκετά δύσκολη. Στην Ελλάδα δεν έχει υπάρξει μέχρι στιγμής ανάλογη μελέτη που να αφορά τα αποτελέσματα της πολλαπλής συμμόρφωσης, με αποτέλεσμα όσα στοιχεία συλλέχθηκαν να προέρχονται από πηγές της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης, έρευνες μελετητών (ειδικά από περιοχές της Ευρώπης), καθώς και από τις προσωπικές απόψεις όσων έδωσαν συνέντευξη στην Ελλάδα. Στην επεξεργασία όλων αυτών των στοιχείων εμπεριέχεται φυσικά και η προσωπική άποψη της συγγραφέως, η οποία διαφαίνεται στα σημεία όπου δεν υπάρχουν παραπομπές. / -

The aim of this thesis is to study the behaviour of the money supply of Trinidad and Tobago during the period from 1797 to 1964, and to relate it to the economic development of the country. No attempt will be made to discuss the implications of the Central Bank of Trinidad. The study ends at the time when the Bank was set up. In the course of the thesis I have described the capital market institutions and given a historical account of the development of the monetary framework of the economy. Both this, and the empirical analysis of the operations of the main institutions - the Eastern Caribbean Currency Board and the commercial banks for the period 1946 - 1964, have not, to my knowledge, been done before. It is hoped that these sections will be of value to students of money and banking, planning further studies in this field. [...]

Based on research involving an overview of 44 policies at Canadian universities and 21 interviews with anti-harassment practitioners across the country, this thesis explores the challenges faced by anti-harassment practitioners working with legally defined institutional harassment discrimination policies. Anti-harassment work at Canadian universities is complex because practitioners must negotiate institutional demands set out in policy as well as politicized demands from members of marginalized groups both inside and outside the institution. Interviews with practitioners reveal that their daily work in reactive investigation and mediation of complaints as well as their proactive work in educating campus communities may support the less powerful parties to complaints, rather than focusing only on limiting the institution’s legal liability. Therefore, although anti-harassment practitioners occupy a boundary role as defined by Fraser (1989), their work is not entirely “depoliticizing”. Practitioners’ identities, sense of marginalization, and commitment to activist politics contribute to their position as tempered radicals as defined by Meyerson and Scully (1995), helping to explain their commitment to both institutional prerogatives and to empowering marginalized members of the institution. The advent of neoliberalism has set the stage for the shift of discourses and practices away from those which value equity to those that underscore traditional divisions of power and challenge the demands of so-called “special interest groups’. This shift is underscored by concerns about “political correctness” that arise within institutional communities and the broader social context. Perhaps the most obvious of the changes relates to the shift from a focus on equity and human rights to what is termed the “respectful workplace model”. The inclusion of personal harassment issues in human rights policies shifts the focus of the policies to issues that are not tied to historical oppressions and can potentially deflect attention from the human rights component of these policies. The challenge is to move beyond a legalistic perspective regarding policy development and to consider changes in the broader social context that influence policy change and the work of anti-harassment practitioners.

A modified Faustmann equation is used to evaluate the comparative social welfare implications of a set of forestry policies in British Columbia. A one-hectare timber stand is modeled with a timber firm as the licensee and the provincial government as the resource owner and policy-maker. Rotation time and silvicultural investment decisions are the firm’s main inputs while revenue, government expenditure, and the values of carbon sequestered and biodiversity accumulated are the components of the social welfare function. The policies include subsidized silviculture, imposed rotation times and compensation for the forest stand’s environmental outputs. The social welfare generated from each policy is compared to determine the best policy for a BC forest stand. Heterogeneity is modeled through individual stands’ infrastructure costs and unprofitable stands are assumed to accumulate environmental social welfare. Finally, a timber supply area (TSA) in BC’s southern interior is used as a case study to explore the model’s policy implications in a real-world forestry context. Social welfare was found to be highest under an environmental subsidy policy that compensates the firm for all carbon sequestered in timber biomass and a fraction of the value of biodiversity, soil carbon and wildlife habitat accumulated over the rotation. The BC government’s current policy of limited funding for incremental silvicultural activities generated less social welfare than the environmental subsidy policy. When heterogeneity was introduced, the general results held. The unprofitable stands generated very little social welfare compared to the harvested stands. In the case study, if timber quality premiums exist, social welfare is highest when stands are managed under the subsidy policy for timber quality, generating moderate levels of short-term wildlife habitat supply. Where this premium does not exist, all stands should be managed for timber supply. To meet the TSA’s stated objectives, timber supply could be managed alongside old growth if only profit and biodiversity matter or in the case where there is a downward-sloping demand for old growth forests.

This simulation study considers a low-volume manufacturing system, which produces complex, customized electronics. Modeling demand as a renewal-reward process, the simulation, inspired by the production system and available data from a Canadian company, examine the performance of alternative inventory policies and operating procedures. Performance indicators that measure the responsiveness and inventory on hand show trade-offs between them in order to supply relevant information to decision makers. Experiments compare make-to-order and make-to-stock scenarios with various inventory parameters as well as introducing variability to examine the model’s robustness under uncertainty. The system under consideration consists of three main processes to manufacture a finished product from raw materials. The first process fabricates metal and electrical components from raw materials. Second, a worker assembles components into a semi-finished product. The third requires information from the customer in order to customize the product according to their needs, and test the unit to ensure its quality. The company, known for their well-designed products and exceptional customer service, wants to improve the accuracy of their leadtime promising. The current MRP control system assumes a completely make-to-order environment where every piece of WIP has a customer order attached to it. However, a forecast of orders likely to materialize from the sales quotes allows production to initiate jobs before the actual order arrives. The approach taken to analyzing this system involves studying the make-to-stock, make-to-order decision at two stock points, components and semi-finished units. The operating procedures examine four possible stocking strategies: holding no inventory, holding only component or semi-finished inventory, and holding both components and semi-finished units. Simulation experiments determine the trade-off between holding inventory and the responsiveness to the customer for each operating procedure. Sources of randomness introduced to processing time, capacity, and demand, show how they respond to added variability. The simulation experiments indicate that holding no inventory, and waiting for a customer order to initiate jobs, results in unstable performance. In order to achieve a stable make-to-order system, it would be necessary to have a fifty percent reduction in demand or product cycle time, a capacity expansion, or forecasting method. In the absence of an accurate forecast model, holding inventory is necessary for an acceptable level of performance. Component inventory is useful as many components are common among a number of products. Suitable component inventory can lead to customer orders typically fulfilled within two weeks. Adding semi-finished inventory can reduce the customer lead-time to under a week though requires stocking at least a few of each semi-finished unit. Holding semi-finished inventory without component stock is possible. However, it is necessary that the replenishment quantity be three or more units ordered at a time. Otherwise, the setup time for components exceeds the allowable limits and resource queues become unstable, much like the completely make-to-order scenario. Using an order-up-to parameter for semi-finished stock can further decrease the setup time incurred per unit. The model is robust to randomness in job times, though it is component stock, which provides an effective buffer to this variability. Machine breakdowns begin to affect responsiveness measures if the average time for repair is greater than a week. Reducing the capacity in the assembly and testing processes can provide the same level of service indicating the two resources are underutilized. The analysis of this system shows the current make-to-order model requires some forecast to function in steady state, which is difficult to model without information on the current forecasting processes. Expanding the simulation model to incorporate forecasting or some other means of analysis can improve its accuracy and credibility as a management decision tool.

Many everyday human skills can be framed in terms of performing some task subject to constraints imposed by the task or the environment. Constraints are usually unobservable and frequently change between contexts. In this thesis, we explore the problem of learning control policies from data containing variable, dynamic and non-linear constraints on motion. We show that an effective approach for doing this is to learn the unconstrained policy in a way that is consistent with the constraints. We propose several novel algorithms for extracting these policies from movement data, where observations are recorded under different constraints. Furthermore, we show that, by doing so, we are able to learn representations of movement that generalise over constraints and can predict behaviour under new constraints. In our experiments, we test the algorithms on systems of varying size and complexity, and show that the novel approaches give significant improvements in performance compared with standard policy learning approaches that are naive to the effect of constraints. Finally, we illustrate the utility of the approaches for learning from human motion capture data and transferring behaviour to several robotic platforms.

This thesis is an examination of the particular role that education has played in the development of colonialism in New Caledonia. The focus is on the role of education in the developing relationship between the colonised people and the colonial power. It will be shown that France's education policies closely paralleled its political objectives in New Caledonia. Similarly, the changing Kanak attitude towards education can be seen to reflect changes in their political aspirations and developments in their anti-colonial struggle.

As governments have grappled with the demands of cost containment policies in health care, a series of challenges have arisen to the 'privileged' position of medical professionals in public health care systems. Hospital managers and administrators have contested medical control of the health policy agenda and the allocation of resources. This managerial challenge raises important questions about how new groups or lobbies have emerged in health policy-making, and about the capacity of governments to induce change within professional policy networks. The thesis explores these issues by analysing the development of French hospital management policy from initial measures towards cost containment launched in 1976 to the complete re-writing of previous legislation on public hospitals in 1991. The policy networks shaping hospital management policy have been transformed by the development of the French corps of public hospital directors and its largest trade union, the Syndicat National des Cadres Hospitaliers (SNCH). Through the 1980s, the SNCH evolved its own programme for hospital management reform, and its members rose to occupy pivotal positions during the decision-making process which led to the 1991 Hospital Law. The thesis highlights the role of politicians in transforming policy networks by making top-down changes in the regulation and financing of policy systems, and by fostering bottom-up changes in the balance of influence between professional groups and in the local management of hospitals. In addition to political influence and contingent professional changes, the study examines how policy systems can have their own logic of development, which powerfully shape long-run patterns of change in the health policy sector.

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