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Abstract The increase of migrant workers into the Kingdom of Thailand began in the mid-1980s and early 1990s when Thailand was in transition from a low-end labour-intensive economy, to a capital-intensive one. The role of migrant workers became even more evident when Thailand encountered the economic crisis of the mid-1990s. Current statistics indicate that Thailand receives more than a million migrant workers from neighbouring countries, including Myanmar, Lao PDR and Cambodia. This paper traces the five stages of the Royal Thai Government's (RTG) policies to managing cross-border migration and migrant worker issues in Thailand. It argues that despite the introduction of policies of management of the issue, migrant workers are vulnerable to human trafficking. Furthermore, as more often than not migrant workers are irregular migrants, they are treated as a risk to national security. As such they are vulnerable to labour exploitation. This paper analyses the problems in policy and legal enforcement between countries of origin and the RTG, suggesting ways in which these problems can be overcome to ensure compliance with international norms, and thus the responsibility of the RTG to its 'foreign workers'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces a series of papers discussing the economic conditions in Asia, with emphasis on the financial crisis. Presentation of the papers at a research seminar organized by the Network for Pacific-Asia Studies, in January, 1998; Themes which arose from the papers; Information on the papers.

In this paper, we aim to investigate the dynamic interdependence of international financial markets. Based on the data regarding daily returns of each market during the period 2006–2015 from Yahoo finance, we mainly focus on examining 27 markets from three continents, including Asia, America and Europe. By checking the dynamic interdependence between those markets, we find that markets from different continents have strong correlation at specific time shift. We also obtain that markets from different continents not only have a strong linkage with others at same day, but at a delay of one day, especially between Asia, Europe and Asia, America. In addition, we further analyze the time-varying influence strength between each two continents and observe that this value has abnormal changes during the financial crisis. These findings can provide us significant insights to understand the underlying dynamic interdependency of international financial markets and further help us make corresponding reasonable decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Testing the integrational properties of visitor arrivals has important implications for policy, for if visitor arrivals are integrated of order one (nonstationary) then it implies that shocks to visitor arrivals are permanent. However, if visitor arrivals are found to be integrated or order zero (stationary) then this implies that shocks to visitor arrivals are temporary. In this paper we examine whether visitor arrivals to Australia are stationary or nonstationary, using the recently developed univariate and panel Lagrange multiplier tests, and the Im, Pesaran and Shin [Im, K.S., Pesaran, M.H., Shin, Y., 1997. Testing for Unit Roots in Heterogeneous Panels. Manuscript, Department of Applied Economics, University of Cambridge; Im, K.S., Pesaran, M.H., Shin, Y., 2003. Testing for Unit Roots in Heterogeneous Panels. Journal of Econometrics, 115, 53–74] panel t-test. Our exercise involves Australia’s 28 tourist source markets. Our main findings are: (1) that visitor arrivals to Australia from 28 tourist source markets are stationary, implying that any shock will have only a temporary effect and (2) the second structural break, which mainly coincides with the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Asian financial crisis, has slowed down the growth rate in visitor arrivals to Australia from 22 out of 28 (79%) of the tourism source markets. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper investigates risk and return in the banking sector in three Asian markets of Taiwan, China and Hong Kong. The study focuses on the risk-return relation in a conditional factor GARCH-M framework that controls for time-series effects. The factor approach is adopted to incorporate intra-industry contagion and an analysis of spillovers between large banks and small banks. Finally, the study provides evidence on these relations before and after the Asian financial crisis of 1997. The results are generally consistent across the markets and with expectations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

From mid-1970s, Asian societies have experienced unprecedented economic growth, and have invested in the development of their own welfare regimes, which offers support to the individual even though public funding is limited. Welfare development received growing attention in Asia. The financial crisis that began in 1997 signified a drastic change in the policy context. The future of Asian economy and employment is bleak, and governments must face the risk of shrinking public resources in response to increasing social demands. The paper discussed the risks of our welfare system, and the weaknesses of public sector, community and private welfare in meeting these increasing social demands after the financial crisis, as observed in Hong Kong and other Asian societies. Although work income and occupational welfare will still be the primary protection systems of individuals and families, partly due to the dominance of neo-liberalism in the global economy and the free market system in this region. However, given the possibility of increasing vulnerability to unemployment in the future, it is also necessary to install a stronger collective system of social security and policies to pool resources together to share the risks. Of course, these initiatives will require a redefinition of the notion of citizenship and the contract that exist among individuals, and between the state and its citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The persistence of non-liberal regimes in Asia, even after the financial and economic crisis, raises questions about how social and economic regimes change and the sort of legal and political frameworks required by modern market capitalism. This paper looks at the issue of convergence and critically assesses claims that the apparent failure of market transformation results from poor policies, weak institutions, captured states and weak social capital. It is argued that the failures of convergence call into question the very assumptions that neo-liberal reform requires markets that are open, governments where public and private interest is separated and defined by law, and democratic political systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the human security implications of the Asian economic crisis for the Western Pacific. It will be shown that the regional insecurity was not caused by great power military intervention or by the escalation of territorial disputes, or subversion from revolutionary ideologies. Rather the insecurity was transmitted through the unregulated operation of the global market, on which the countries of East Asia had based their national and regional development strategies. It is likely that the regional approach to security will change forever after 1998. It is argued that if the countries of the Western Pacific are to successfully ameliorate the effects of the Asian economic crisis as well as optimally position themselves to resolve future challenges then a regional security regime that revolves around humanitarian concerns must be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyze the correlation structure between U.S. markets and Asian markets. Our motivation being analysis of the effect of the 2008 financial crisis on Asian markets. For this purpose, we apply the linear correlations coefficient, the mutual information and the transfer entropy between U.S. stock market indices and eleven major Asia stock market indices. Then, with the overlapping windows for whole sample, and non-overlapping windows for three sub-samples, we quantify the dynamically evolving results of correlation structure between U.S. markets and Asian markets, and study the effect of the 2008 financial crisis on Asian markets by measuring the adherence between post and pre-crisis. Subsequently, for each blue-chip, we propose to study the 2008 financial crisis by measuring the adherence between post and pre-crisis. From this analysis, we can get a dependent structure map of Asian markets and U.S. markets, as well as may better forecasting of risk. • The dynamically evolving results of correlation structure between U.S. markets and Asian markets is obtained. • Nonlinear effects dominate stronger dependencies between all indices after 2008 financial crisis. • The synchronicity decreases for large variation of Firms-specific. • Compared to other Several financial crises or crash, 2008 global financial crisis spread rapidly to Asian markets. • China's stock market and the U.S. markets is a lack of interdependence during 2008 financial crisis. • The transfer entropy from U.S. stock market index to eleven major stock market indices rises sharply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]