Introduction 1 Section 1. Why do we need a General Agreement on Public Services (GAPS) 2 The role of these services in economic and social developme nt 2 Public and private roles: the argument and the evidence 7 Globalisation, international institutions and services 12 Section 2. What already exits 14 General Agreement on Trade in services (GATS) 14 A rights-based approach 18 A more practical a...

In this study, Weiss's (1973) theorizing about the sources of emotional and social loneliness is elaborated--with notions about the asymmetric gratifications derived from marriage, about the conflicting loyalties that result from remarriage, and about selection into marriage--in order to reach an understanding of gender differences in loneliness, both in and outside of marriage. First and subse...

This paper explores self-perceived mate value (SPMV), and its association with self-esteem, in eight cultures. 1066 participants, from 8 cultural groups in 7 countries, rated themselves on 24 SPMVs and completed a measure of self-esteem. Consistent with evolutionary theory, women were more likely to emphasise their caring and passionate romantic nature. In line with previous cross-cultural rese...

BACKGROUND Few studies have addressed the challenges associated with international students as they adapt to studying medicine in a new host country. Higher level institutions have increasing numbers of international students commencing programmes. This paper explores the experiences of a cohort of students in the early years of medical school in Ireland, where a considerable cohort are from an...

We examine the influence of individual characteristics and targeted and universal social policy on single-mother poverty with a multilevel analysis across 18 affluent Western democracies. Although single mothers are disproportionately poor in all countries, there is even more cross-national variation in single-mother poverty than in poverty among the overall population. By far, the United State...

The political-economic institutions that have traditionally reconciled economic efficiency with social solidarity in the advanced industrial countries, and specifically in the so-called ‘coordinated market economies’, are indisputably under pressure today. However, scholars disagree on the trajectory and significance of the institutional changes we can observe in many of these countries, and th...

Over the past two decades in Australia, the field of gifted education has expanded considerably. The term ‘giftedness’ has effectively entered mainstream discourse. The field of gifted education, which nowadays operates as a compensatory function of mass education, is comprised of groups of people who broadly share in the concept of giftedness but contest, through discourse, its meanings and pr...

The goals of the present study were to examine (1) the mean-level stability and differential stability of children's positive emotional intensity, negative emotional intensity, expressivity, and social competence from early elementary school-aged to early adolescence, and (2) the associations between the trajectories of children's emotionality and social functioning. Using four waves of longitu...