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This article develops a model of farmers' land acquisition and investment decisions. The model clarifies the relation between land values, landownership security, and credit markets. The risk of eviction on untitled lands and the advantages in access to credit associated with titled land are shown to account for the higher price of titled land. Furthermore, observed land prices are distorted when credit is priced below the opportunity cost of capital and the risk of eviction is positive. Therefore social benefit analysis of land titling cannot utilize land prices without correcting for these distortions. The article offers formulas for performing such corrections. Econometric estimates of the value of legal ownership in three provinces of Thailand using cross-section land price data show a statistically significant effect of ownership security on land price. The econometric estimates of ownership security are combined with the formulas generated by the model to yield estimates of the social benefit of land titling in the three provinces. The analysis implies that granting full legal ownership to squatters can be a socially beneficial policy in many provinces.

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Thailand's current economic crisis resulted from the bursting of the bubble economy that developed from a combination of excessive speculation and liberalization of the finance system. Not only is Thailand expected to post a negative 5.5 percent economic growth and 9.4 percent inflation by the end of 1998, but it will also experience a reversal of rural-urban migration trends. The Thai government is stepping up enforcement against illegal foreign workers and is seeking help from neighboring states in facilitating the reintegration of their workers. At the same time the government targets to send at least 215,000 Thai workers to other countries.

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’.