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This qualitative study seeks to explore the grounded realities of live-in care workers in Malta. The growing economic affluence in Malta, coupled by an ageing population and the lowest fertility rate in the European Union, is resulting in a greater demand for live-in care givers, particularly from the Philippines. Reinforced through public policy wherein families who employ a qualified live-in carer are benefiting from government subsidy to ease burden on the state’s residential homes, Malta appears to be moving from a passive to a more active international recruitment of domestic migrant workers. This inquiry provides an evidence-based contribution to the appeal of the European Economic and Social Committee of the EU calling for more research about the rights of live-in care workers in Europe which has long remained almost invisible to EU and Member State policymakers. The majority of the findings reflect some of the concerns that have already been identified in international literature, like higher levels of precariousness, contractual agreements not being honoured, psychological obligations, fraudulent agents and the lack of separation between work and personal life. Other findings have endogenous characteristics that are closely linked to the island state of Malta, namely its safe environment, Catholic culture, bilingual coexistence of Maltese and English and the competitive nature of Filipino community groups that may discourage further social engagement. The chapter concludes with brief policy suggestions to trigger improvements in the wellbeing and dignity of migrant carers.

We use simulations from a detailed dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to study three broad policies toward illegal workers in U.S. employment: supply restriction (tighter border security), demand restriction (prosecution of employers), and legalization through a guest-worker program with a visa tax. From the point of view of the welfare of legal residents, the results strongly favor the third option. In our welfare analysis, we use a six-part decomposition. This identifies effects on the occupational mix of legal employment as a major factor. Throughout the chapter, model results are explained through arguments and diagrams that will be familiar to economists, particularly those working in trade. No familiarity with the underlying CGE model is assumed. Technical details on our labor market assumptions are given in the Appendix.

We investigate producers’ choice between geographical indications (GI) and brand advertising (BA) as pure marketing strategies to convey information to consumers. Producers also decide whether or not to select an effort level for improving the quality of their products. We identify conditions under which GI and BA emerge with and without quality effort, depending on the relative costs and effectiveness of marketing strategies and quality improvement. Beyond the conventional equilibrium cases of GI-no-quality-effort and BA-with-quality-effort, we identify several other equilibrium strategies. Under plausible parameter characterization, and in spite of the free-riding problem of collective reputation, producers choose GI and quality improvement efforts at equilibrium. This occurs when the cost of marketing is high, the relative cost of quality effort is low relative to the former, and when the effectiveness of marketing promotions is low. BA without quality improvement also emerges as an equilibrium strategy for the opposite cost structure (low cost of promotion, high cost of effort relative to promotion, and higher effectiveness of promotion). Finally, the joint selection of both instruments BA and GI is examined. We motivate and illustrate our analysis with the European and New-World wine industries.

Film has a number of characteristics that define it as a commodity-type and hence distinguish it from other commodity-types.⁴ Not only is film non-diminishable in consumption (because it is consumed in the mind of the viewer), but also the images that make up a film are infinitely reproducible and, in the era of digital technology, reproducible at near zero marginal cost. Furthermore, each film is to some extent novel in that its constitutive images are each unique and so is the ordering of the images into the sequenced continuity that makes the film meaningful to (but not, ipso facto, liked by) the consumer.⁵ Hence, prior to the consumption of a film, consumers cannot have a complete idea of the visual and aural cinematic utility that they are going to experience, nor of their reaction to that experience. Films are thus experience goods: an experiential divide exists between the two mental states of awareness, namely expectation and realization, both of which entail a learning process based on previous experience (Nelson, 1974, p. 745). A final element in the ontology of film as a commodity is the rapidly diminishing utility of film in consumption. That is, once consumed in theatrical release, films are rarely revisited theatrically by consumers, who commonly prefer the anticipation of new cinematic pleasure to the repeat viewing of old pleasures.