No aspect of legal formalism has interested comparative jurists as much as the extent of legislative codification across legal systems. This book looks at codification from a broad, international perspective, discussing general themes as well as various legal fields. The first of two volumes on this subject begins with a general theoretical and historical view of codification, followed by a series of other horizontal inquiries. It encompasses papers focusing on several significant contemporary issues in codification, including "codification of private law in post-soviet times", "criminal law codification beyond the nation state" and "soft codification of private law". In addition, this volume consists of general reports and national reports on administrative procedure and human rights, providing a comparative analysis of codification of law. This book is developed from papers presented at the 2012 Thematic Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law.

This publication provides the proceedings of an international workshop, held in South Africa, intended to address how international co-operation in science and technology can further the three inter-related aspects (economic, social and environmental) of the development process.

This book explores an under-researched but vital part of education: the first year at primary/elementary school. The work shows that children’s progress varies enormously from school to school, class to class and child to child. This variation is important because the more progress that children make in that first year of school, the higher their academic attainment at the end of compulsory schooling. The iPIPS (international Performance Indicators in Primary Schools) project, upon which this book is based, has been able to provide deeper insights into some of the key issues within and across different contexts whilst highlighting new and some ongoing issues. Despite all the work there remain unanswered or new puzzling issues which are also explored. We need to know how to improve the education at that stage and, more broadly, we need greater clarity about when children should be taught to read and be introduced to formal arithmetic, in other words, when they should start school. We also need to be clearer about whether, when and how young children should be assessed. The book will suggest some answers but it will raise important questions and dilemmas for which we do not, as yet, have answers.

The volume contains papers presented at a conference "On the International Dimension of Environmental Policy". It deals with two issues: *international environmental agreements; *environmental policies in open economies. Both issues are hot topics. The debate on how to cope with global climate change has become increasingly heated and controversial, and the relationship between trade and the environment is on the WTO agenda. The book contains review papers in which leading scholars in the field summarise the state of the art and original research extending the state of the art. Most of the papers are theoretically oriented, but some papers also present empirical results, using new econometric methods and new data. The book contains material for those students of economics and researchers who wish to deepen their knowledge in the area of International Environmental Economics, but also for those who endeavour to break new ground in this important field of research.

The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.

Critical Education in International Perspective presents new perspectives on critical education from Latin America, Southern Europe and Africa. While recognising the valuable work in critical education emerging from North America and the Northern hemisphere, testimony to Paulo Freire's influence there, this book sheds light on parts of the world that are not given prominence. The book highlights the complementary work of Lorenzo Milani, Amilcar Cabral, exponents of Italian feminism, Ada Gobetti, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, Antonio Gramsci, Gabriela Mistral and Julius Nyerere. It also focuses on a range of struggles such as education in the context of landlessness, independence, renewal and cognitive justice, social creation and against neoliberalism and decolonization.

This book examines how quality and good practice in early childhood education and care is interpreted and implemented in a variety of settings and circumstances, globally as well as nationally. Drawing on a lifetime of practice in a variety of roles and in particular using her experience of research and policy making in a wide variety of countries, the author discusses issues of quality and practice in early education and care

This report presents the results of the second cycle of the TALIS survey conducted in 2013.