Domestic Service Providers Research Articles

ADDRESSING LEGAL ISSUES IN THE GLOBALISATION OF ECOTOURISM IN MALAYSIA

Some environmentalists argue that the process of globalisation which has resulted in trade liberalisation, accelerates economic growth and development, and that this promotes polluting activities and speeds the depletion ofnonrenewable resources (A. Y Seita, 1999). Since Malaysia is one of the signatories of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services (AFAS) which provides equal investment opportunities to foreign investors as domestic service providers including ecotourism, this article explores the legal issues that arise in the globalization of ecotourism.

Exploring policy options in joint intertemporal-spatial trade models using an incomplete markets approach

In this paper we discuss the desirability of service trade liberlization in the presence of incompleteness of markets where there is both inter-spatial and intertemporal trade between countries. We use numerical simulation methods for insights and relate our discussion to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in the WTO. We interpret the absence of intertemporal trade as an absence of intermediation services provided by both domestic and foreign service providers. For simplicity, we consider extreme cases where intertemporal intermediation services can only be provided by domestic providers, so that when intertemporal trade in services is not allowed, markets are not complete. To our knowledge, this type of models is not used in the trade literature as general comparative statics results are unavailable. We first consider the liberalization of trade in financial services in an inter-spatial and intertemporal model of two countries, and we show how services liberalization can be welfare worsening in the presence of a tariff on spatial trade in goods. We show that this can hold in an artificial world with no domestic financial services provider. We compare financial service trade autarky in which there is no intermediation to financial service trade liberalization which involves costless intertemporal intermediation provided by foreign service providers. We also consider a more complex (and realistic) world where costly intermediation services can be provided by both domestic and foreign providers.

AML and counter-terrorist finance: How could the payments industry collaborate?

Anti-money laundering (AML) and counter terrorist finance (CTF) are now recognised as ongoing and possibly endless endeavours, especially in the banking industry, as they provide an entrance to the formal financial world. It is one of those areas where regulation is global, and regulatory harmonisation is evident, while enforcement is local in nature. While ultimate responsibility for AML compliance rests with each institution (eg banks) that has a relationship with the customer, collaboration in various areas can be sought for the sake of effectiveness, industry-wide cost saving and a better basis for customer services. A typical constraint that a bank would have is the fact that, in principle, banks only know what their customers do with them. When a payment is received from another bank, the receiving bank does not know whether the originator information is true or whether it is a string of alphanumeric characters that resemble a customer identity. By going through an example of an attempt to monitor payments at a Japanese domestic low value (high-volume) payment system, this paper brings to light the various issues that international as well as domestic payment service providers are facing. It also indicates potential solutions for cross-border as well as cross-industry payment monitoring. It is the first time that such propositions have been put forward in a large-volume environment, and can be made possible only because business, technical, operational and regulatory requirements are converging throughout the world.

A Nationwide Survey of Domestic Violence Shelters' Programming for Older Women

This article describes a nationwide survey of domestic violence shelters that examined special programming for older battered women. More than two fifths of the 428 respondents had sheltered at least one woman age 60 or older during the previous year, and 61 stated they offered special programming for older women. This programming most often was outreach or individual interventions. A majority of the respondents provided education about domestic violence to adult protective services staff and senior centers, but only 22% presented information to aging agency staff. Interactions between domestic violence and service providers for the aged are critical as they discover they have clients in common.

Recreating ''Domestic Service'': Institutional Cultures and the Evolution of Paid Household Work

This paper contributes an Australian perspective to writing on paid household work in feminist social science. It explores how some Australian domestic service providers are recreating ''domestic service'' with institutional and cultural strategies to overcome the stigma associated with this occupation. These developments are analyzed through three case studies of new models of domestic service provision. It concludes that several factors, including gendered ideologies of professionalism and skill, costs of entry and exit, and the structure of demand interact to segment the market for domestic services by gender and ethnicity. The analysis contributes to understanding of the labor process of waged domestic labor, and of relationships between skill, organizational structure and labor market segmentation.

Twin Epidemics:

Gay and bisexual male victims of domestic violence present social service providers with a complex array of problems related to their being both battered and, in many cases, affected by HIV disease. Service providers need to be aware of the issues these men face and be able to help them cope with both epidemics. Accepting a man's victimization as real, regardless of the size, weight, and health status of his partner is a necessary first step. Understanding that HIV does not cause battering but can be an ominous weapon of control is crucial. It is also necessary to understand the impact that HIV has on a man's decision to remain with or leave his violent partner; a decision that may differ given the particular HIV status of the victim and/or his battering partner.

The productivity effects of the liberalization of Japanese telecommunication policy

In the early 1980s, the Japanese government decided to pursue policies of liberalization that opened Japan's telecommunication market to competition and moved toward the privatization of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), the dominant domestic telecommunication service provider. The purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of liberalization on the productive performance of NTT. To assess the productive consequences of liberalization, we first provide basic productivity measures for NTT. The Total Factor Productivity (TFP) measures are then decomposed to separate out the effects of liberalization from other factors such as scale, technology, and capacity utilization. The TFP decomposition is based on the parameter estimates of a dynamic cost model.