Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Dhaka (Bangladesh) Economic conditions'

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 331-404) Attempts to contribute toward greater understanding of the urbanization process in Bangladesh. Focuses particularly on the rural-urban migration process, explaining the causes of mobility and stability and the consequences flowing from that movement for the wellbeing of migrants and their families.

This thesis explores urban poverty and the adaptations of the urban poor in the slums of the megacity of Dhaka, Bangladesh. It seeks to make a contribution to understanding and analysis of the phenomenon of rapid mass urbanisation in the Third World and its social consequences, the formation of huge urban slums and new forms of urban poverty. Its focus is the analysis of poverty which has been overwhelmingly dominated by economic approaches to the neglect of the social questions arising from poverty. This thesis approaches these social questions through an ???urban livelihood framework???, arguing that this provides a more comprehensive framework to conceptualise poverty through its inclusion of both material and non-material dimensions. The study is based on primary data collected from slums in Dhaka City. Five hundred poor households were surveyed using a structured questionnaire to investigate the economic activities, expenditure and consumption, access to housing and land, family and social networking and cultural and political integration. The survey data was supplemented by qualitative data collected through fifteen in-depth interviews with poor households. The thesis found that poverty in the slums of Dhaka City was most strongly influenced by recent migration from rural areas, household organisation, participation in the ???informal??? sector of the economy and access to housing and land. Almost half of the poor households in the study locations were identified as ???hardcore poor???, that is having insufficient income for their physical needs. The remainder were found to be ???absolute poor???, those who experienced poverty and vulnerability but varied in their levels of income and consumption. This level of poverty was also characterised by their social, cultural and political marginalisation. In summary, the urban poor remain very much dependent on their household and social networking, the main social capital they use to adapt to life in Dhaka City. Overall, the urban poor in this study experience the highest level of poverty and vulnerability in their everyday life. The thesis argues that the experience of poverty in the megacity of Dhaka for these households follows the pattern of urbanisation without development, the very opposite to their expectations and aspirations.

The coast of Bangladesh, comprising the complex delta of the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river system has immense resources for development. In the concept of present development efforts, this zone is among the most neglected in Bangladesh. It is very often affected by natural calamities and the situation is further aggravated by some man-made hazards, which cause heavy casualties in human lives, cattle, in reducing the size of the coastal areas and in severe damage of properties worth billions of dollars. This thesis envisages looking into the particular issue of non-farm employment. This is more important in an economy in which the land-person ratio is continuously on the decrease and dissemination of intensive crop culture has limitations. This study is exploratory in nature and uses both quantitative and qualitative methods, employing survey interviews for 80 households, 20 key informant interviews and a case study on an organization in order to assess the dynamics and prospects of non-farm employment in the coastal regions of Bangladesh. Findings of the study indicate that practically all of the non-farm field of the entire coastal belt is not yet a government priority. As such, there is need for some persuasive work in formulating some policies to develop sustainable harvests from the abundant maritime resources of the area. This will create provision for non-farm employment as well as producing a vast quantity of exportable commodities for the national well-being. It is expected that it will benefit the people of the area in particular and the entire country in general.

There is growing attention to analyse the influence of gender upon women’s entrepreneurship. Nonetheless, the body of literature almost entirely concentrates on developed nations, specifically on the USA and Europe. The research context for the thesis is Bangladesh, a South Asian developing nation, where there was a government initiative to support small businesses of women through bank loans. Recognising that entrepreneurship is a social phenomenon, it is important to explore how gender subordination is articulated in the experiences of women business-owners in developing countries. Placing women at the centre of the study, this feminist standpoint research undertook interviews with 21 Bangladeshi women business-owners. Considering finance as a major area of entrepreneurship, this thesis analyses the influence of gender upon women business-owners’ access to debt finance in the context of a patriarchal developing nation. To address this aim, the study investigates the family as well as the broader societal context. The thesis contributes to advance the understanding of gender subordination of women business-owners within the context of debt financing from developed nations to developing nations. The extant literature on debt finance of developed nations focuses almost solely on discrimination-related issues. It is individual woman business-owner centric, ignoring the family or the broader societal context. Nevertheless, the empirical evidence of this study suggests that male family members were inevitably involved in the process. Further, in developed nations, the exploration of patriarchal practices is primarily limited to the adverse effect of societal expectation of work (i.e., domestic responsibilities and childcare) on the businesses of women. This study extends the view by demonstrating that the dominating, oppressing and exploiting roles of male family members were evident at the individual level with a direct influence on the business activities. The husbands of many women were even found to share the bank loans entirely or partially. This has implications for the effectiveness of the government policy, aiming at the emancipation of the women. Moreover, the study significantly adds to the prevailing knowledge by identifying certain context specific family related issues (for instance, child marriage) or the structural, cultural issues of the broader society (such as, corruption) in relation to gender subordination of women business-owners. While explaining gender subordination of women business-owners, the contribution of the thesis is not limited to its understanding in a developing nation. Given the highly patriarchal nature of the context, the study provides opportunity to extend the comprehension of some of the issues of gender subordination (for instance, the respectable position of women) that are existing in developed nations in a more subtle form. Thus, it provides a platform for future research in the field of entrepreneurship, gender and finance in developing nations as well as in developed nations.

The prime objectives of the study are to analyse the effects of tax and tariff policies in Bangladesh. Toward this end, different variants of computable general equilibrium models are developed and used to assess the distributional consequence of tax reform and to examine the resource allocation and income distribution effects of tariff liberalisation within the paradigm of both 'traditional' and 'new' trade theories. A computable general equilibrium model of the Bangladesh economy is developed to assess the distributional consequences of the indirect tax reform which involves the introduction of a value added tax system. The model captures specific features of a consumption-type and destination principle-based value added tax system which has been adopted in Bangladesh. An alternative model of the Bangladesh economy is also developed to analyse the effects of tariff liberalisation on resource allocation and income distribution under both competitive and non-competitive assumptions. The model explicitly incorporates 'market structure' variables such as marginal costs, the number of domestic firms, the excess profit condition, the market demand elasticities for domestic firms and increasing returns to scale. The models are static in nature and are calibrated to a 1988/89 data set compiled within the framework of a social accounting matrix (SAM). The social accounting matrix integrates different data sources and the input-output table to depict the major macroeconomic relations and provides a consistent macroeconomic data set for policy modelling. Such a framework is particularly useful for a country such as Bangladesh with sparse and conflicting data sources. The SAM is an attractive framework for locating inconsistencies and for resolving them in best the possible ways. The incidence effects of the indirect tax system under pre-VAT and VAT systems are based on two approaches: a simple approach and a computable general equilibrium approach. Two sets of policy experiments are carried out. First, excise duties of domestic production activities and sales taxes on imports are replaced by a revenue-neutral single rate of value-added tax. In the second experiment, the VAT system is extended to the service sector with a revenue-neutral VAT rate. The results of policy experiments indicate that because of exemptions on subsistence agricultural products, and because of the progressive structure of the tariffs, the overall indirect tax system would remain progressive even after the introduction of a single rate VAT. However, the overall indirect tax incidence appears to be less progressive under the VAT system compared with the pre-VAT system. The effects of tariff liberalisation on resource allocation and income distribution are also examined in this study. It is observed that the results of tariff liberalisation are sensitive to the way the model is specified. It is also observed that in the competitive and constant returns to scale model variant, resources move from the heavily protected sector to the less protected sectors as a result of tariff liberalisation. In contrast, the heavily protected manufacturing sectors turn out to be the main beneficiary of liberalisation when imperfect competition is introduced. Expansion of manufacturing output appears to come from the pro-competitive effects of tariff liberalisation. On the other hand, almost all the manufacturing sectors show much larger output growth with the incorporation of increasing returns to scale. The larger expansion of output of manufacturing sectors is due to a reduction in unrealised scale economies. The income distribution effects of tariff liberalisation are captured through the changes in income levels of the six household groups and changes in factor income and factor returns. The redistribution of income under liberalisation appears to favour the low income household groups. However, it appears that the relative progressivity and regressivity in the distribution of household income depend on the relative changes of capital and labour income. The association between market structure variables and profitability in the manufacturing sector of Bangladesh is also analysed in this study. This exercise provides some evidence on the association between industrial structure and profitability and assesses the importance of foreign and domestic factors on industry profitability. Two alternative measures of concentration namely concentration ratio and Hirschman-Herfindahl index and two foreign competition variables such as import shares and effective tariff rates are used to examine this association. The results of this exercise indicate that profitability is significantly related to concentration levels in the manufacturing sector of Bangladesh. It also reports that foreign competition variables play a significant role in affecting profitability in domestic industries. It is observed that the profitability is higher in those industries where concentration levels are high and import shares are low and effective tariff rates are high.

Among the reasons for financial exclusion is the fact that the poor, being largely illiterate and unemployed, are traditionally perceived as ‘bad credit risks’. This is the dominant perception of the poor in the formal credit markets – a perception that also exists in the microcredit sector. In other words, while information asymmetry is a recognized problem in lender-borrower relationships, lenders consider the problem particularly severe when they contemplate doing business with the poor. A contrasting paradigm, such as the one adopted by Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, views the poor as possessing economic potentials that have not been tapped – that is, as ‘good credit risks’. Grameen Bank’s microcredit features appear to have successfully mitigated the problems of information asymmetry and, to a large extent, made it possible for the poor to access microenterprise credit. Using the Grameen Bank model as a benchmark, this study examined the lending features of private sector microlenders in South Africa and those of KhulaStart (credit) scheme. The aim was to identify how the lending features affect microenterprise credit access. Primary data were obtained through interviews, while relevant secondary data were also used in the study. A key finding of the study was that while the Khulastart scheme was, like Grameencredit, targeted at the poor, the method of its delivery appeared diluted or unduly influenced by the conventional (private sector) paradigm that pre-classifies people as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ credit risks. As a result, the scheme was not robust enough to support microenterprise credit access. This has consequences for job-creation and poverty reduction. Based on the findings, the study maintains that a realistic broadening of microenterprise credit access will not occur unless there is a fundamental paradigm shift in microcredit practices, and unless measures designed to mitigate information asymmetries are sensitive to the historical, economic and sociocultural realities of the South African poor.

This thesis provides an original contribution to understanding of stakeholder capitalism and applications of stakeholder capitalism to labour governance in globalised clothing production networks. Specifically, this thesis draws on primary qualitative and ethnographic field-data collected in Dhaka, Bangladesh to provide new insight to the challenge of poor working conditions and workers’ rights in the global garment industry. The research presented here questions the potential of retail-led stakeholder capitalism to contribute positive development outcomes to the lives of workers employed in cut and stitch garment manufacture. Adopting the Global Production Network’s (GPN) framework, the thesis argues that the ability of stakeholder capitalism to engage and advance the voice of workers in clothing and retail GPNs is influenced by the nature of the relationship and strategic coupling between transnational retailers and their localised factory suppliers. It argues that civil society demands for labour standards have generated a compliance-based response to stakeholder capitalism whereby expectations and acceptance of labour standards are negotiated between retailers and their suppliers. While these negotiations appear discursive, the voices of workers in these negotiations appear largely absent. Thus, it makes an original contribution to understanding relational processes in clothing production systems, moving away from top-down, buyer-driven linear approaches,to conceive power relations in retail production networks as dynamic, subjective and negotiated. This thesis argues that how these power relationships are negotiated and the impacts and interactions of these relations needs to be understood and accounted for if stakeholder capitalism is going to have a serious impact on improving the lives of workers in globalised production systems.

The objective of this thesis is to study the phenomenon of postwar migration both theoretically and empirically with a view to establishing relationships between social relations and migration. Migration is studied here within a conceptual framework of mode of production, relations of production, hegemony, and cash nexus. The historical aspects of migration are acknowledged throughout. The thesis then studies the theories of migration that are available and traces their developments. In this process, the thesis discovers ideology in many migration theories and literature. It selects three specific problematics of the postwar migration, named as 'zonal imbalance', 'mother country' migration, heavy representation of people who form lower SEGs. By examining these three closely, the thesis reveals many erroneous conception and notions about the postwar migration. In this process, the thesis rejects 'individualistic' and 'voluntary' actions in postwar migration. For the empirical part, Bangalee migration from Bangladesh to Britain has been chosen for its typicality and other reasons. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods have been used. Two control groups, one in Britain, (migrants) and another in Bangladesh (non-migrants, who had had the opportunity to migrate at some point in time, but did not) have been studied in as much depth as possible. The findings of the experience of the respondents are offered in relation to the historical evidence, particularly the relations of production in Bangladesh, and migration history of Bangladesh. Despite the basis of a small universe used in this research, international and historical persepectives have always been borne in mind. The objective remained the study of the totality of migration. Having taken the views of those who did not migrate (non-migrants) at a time when 'everyone was going', this research can claim to be a unique way of exploring a sociological phenomenon by negative investigation. The concluding part is in two chapters. In the first, the thesis has attempted to develop four new categories of migration to end the debate who can or cannot be called a migrant. It then exposes the myths of migration. Having established that socio-cultural transition migration, which is one of the four categories developed in this chapter, is the major concern of most migration studies, the thesis argues that a subtle process of 'branding' exists in the matters of encouraging migration to a country, whether the country is situated in the 'First World' or in the NICs. In fact, since '90s, the trends in the global population movements have changed so rapidly and radically that all older theories fail to explain the new phenomenon. The thesis argues that in order to understand 'migration', one has to study the changes that have occured in the social relations, emanating from changes in their relations of production. Finally, the thesis asserts that the phenomenon of human migration can possibly be explained within the conceptual framework chosen. It concludes that social relations play a major role in migration and offers a definition towards developing a sociological theory of migration.

In Islamic societies, religion plays a significant role in shaping the home and the environment. An important feature of the Islamic culture is the segregation of women from males other than next of kin. This aspect has given rise to the separation of domains for men and women, both in the home and the neighbourhood. And this duality of space in turn reinforces the seclusion and segregation of women.
This thesis studies this phenomenon in rural settlements in South Asia in regions where Muslims predominate and also in non-Muslim areas influenced by centuries of Muslim rule. The living patterns of rural women and how they use and perceive their local space formed the focus of the study.
A field study was undertaken in a rural community in Bangladesh. Gender segregation norms and the resulting spatial organization of dwellings of different socio-economic groups were studied and compared. An important premise of the study is how the poor manage to integrate their faith and Islamic customs in their living environment.

This thesis is a collection of three independent essays that applies microeconometrics techniques to empirically study topics in development and labour economics. The first chapter uses evidence from a natural experiment in Bangladesh, where households were treated to different types of transfer, food grains and cash, at different periods in time, to test the effect of these transfers on household consumption behaviour. Using the fixed effect instrumental variable model, the estimation results show that though in-kind transfers did cause households to consume more grain than they would have chosen under equal-value cash transfers, the impact on calorie consumption and children health status is minimal. Households that received cash were able to reallocate their funds more effectively, and chose to spend their extra income on clothing and children's non-food consumption, while at the same time spending no more on vices. The second chapter investigates the dynamics of living standards in Thailand. Income and earnings processes are first modelled after the statistical Galton-Markov process before being extended to follow a more structural permanent earnings model. Empirical estimations of income and earnings persistence in Thailand employ both constructed pseudo-panel data from Thailand's Labour Force Surveys and the Townsend Thai panel data. Galton-Markov estimates found conditional persistence to be low in Thailand. However, quantile regression estimates find that persistence is low at the bottom of the distribution but high at the top, indicating a divergence in earnings as time passes. A study of the covariance structure of earnings finds that total variation in the earnings process is predominantly driven by moderately persistent transitory components following the AR(1) process. The third chapter attempts to empirically fit the power-law distribution and study the dynamics of inequality, especially at the upper end, of the income and consumption distribution in Thailand. We find that using the popular but incorrect method based on the linear regression approach will lead to researchers drawing a wrong conclusion. Regression estimates of the power-law exponent, a, provide strong evidence of power-law fit in Thailand. However, from the implementation of the superior Clauset et al. method, the evidence in support of the power-law fit is much weaker. Estimates of a for both income and consumption suggest that there is low inequality at the top in Thailand but further inspection finds that there is a high level of persistent between-group inequality between the top and bottom ends of the distribution. In addition, following Battistin et al. (2009), we find weak support for Gibrat's law of proportional random growth as the income-generating process in Thailand.

Bangladesh is a poor country that has not performed well in economic terms since independence. It was hoped that industrialization would lead to rapid growth, but protectionist import-substitution policies failed to deliver industrial development. Following the trend toward identifying policy problems as being key to growth, this study sets out to examine the effects of foreign exchange and trade policies on industrial development. An ORANI-type computable general equilibrium model, CGE-B89, for the Bangladesh economy (on a 1989 database) was developed for policy analysis. The model was simulated for an exogenous inflow of foreign aid to estimate the shadow exchange rate. It was then simulated for changes in the official exchange rate, money supply, tariffs and export subsidies. Simulations were designed for the short-run in identical economic environments. For each simulation two alternative assumptions about the labour market were made: fixed nominal wages in the presence of involuntary Keynesian unemployment and aggregate employment fixed by the exogenous supply of labour. The macroeconomic and sectoral effects were analysed, and the aggregate welfare gain (or loss) was evaluated for each exogenous change. Harberger's fundamental equation of applied welfare economics (Harberger 1971) was used to disaggregate the change in welfare, due to a small change in an exogenous variable, into the direct welfare impact of the change and indirect gains (or losses) from alleviating (or exacerbating) distortions in all other markets. To apply Harberger's fundamental equation, it was necessary to extend his analysis to allow for intermediate goods, terms of trade effects, indirect taxes on consumption and intermediate inputs, production subsidies, exchange controls and wage rigidity (for simulations in which changes in involuntary Keynesian unemployment are allowed). In the case of shadow price of foreign exchange, the direct effect on welfare of a costless increase in foreign exchange availability of US$1, due to increased foreign aid, is the value of US$1 at the official exchange rate (taka 32.14). The indirect effects equal the sum, across all distorted markets, of the change in distorted activity multiplied by the excess of marginal social benefit of that activity over its marginal social cost. For example, in the case of tariffs, the marginal social benefit of an extra unit of imports is domestic price, while the marginal social cost is the world cif import price (exogenously given in the model). Therefore the gap between the marginal social benefit and marginal social cost is the amount of the tariff, and the indirect benefit of additional foreign aid in alleviating tariff distortions is the tariff times the rise in imports due to the increased foreign aid availability. In the case of Keynesian unemployment, the indirect benefit is the difference between wage and the disutility of labour (assumed to be zero in the model) times the change in employment. With rigid nominal wages in the presence of involuntary Keynesian unemployment, the indirect effect on welfare of a costless increase in foreign exchange availability was estimated to be more than 30 per cent of the official exchange rate. This percentage also measures the extent by which the shadow exchange rate exceeded the official exchange rate. The shadow exchange rate was 15 per cent above the official exchange rate when the nominal wages were flexible and aggregate employment was fixed at the base-year level. Model results suggested that the inflow of foreign aid would raise households' welfare at the expense of reduced production in the tradable sectors. Foreign aid inflow would cause a fall in the real exchange rate, defined as the ratio of the price of tradable goods to the price of nontradable goods. Production of most of the importables and exportables would decline against a substantial expansion in the nontradable sectors. In a small open economy with a unified exchange rate and no exchange controls, a devaluation of the exchange rate increases the money stock through the Hume mechanism. But such a causality does not take place in an economy confronting exchange controls under a dual exchange rate system (involving an exogenously fixed official exchange rate and the market determined secondary exchange rate). In such an economy, changes in money supply and changes in the official exchange rate may be viewed as two separate policy tools to affect the secondary exchange rate premium, and hence implicit taxes on imports and exports. Production and consumption decisions in the economy are thus influenced. The study explored the consequences of two instruments for exchange rate unification: devaluation of the official exchange rate and a contraction of the domestic money supply. Simulations of the devaluation of the official exchange rate and increases in money supply have suggested that a devaluation of approximately 2 per cent or a contraction of domestic money supply by 2 to 2.5 per cent would unify the exchange rates. When aggregate employment is fixed, devaluation and money supply contraction would both reduce the aggregate implicit taxes on exports, and would lead to a deterioration in the international terms of trade. As a result, welfare would fall. In other words, unification of the exchange rates in the absence of optimal export taxes is estimated to be welfare worsening. A nominal contraction (or expansion) degenerates (or produces) a Keynesian stimulus under conditions of sticky nominal wages. As a result, a contraction in the domestic money supply would be welfare worsening, and a devaluation which is equivalent to a monetary expansion would be welfare augmenting in conditions of wage rigidity. But a 2 per cent devaluation, which would unify the exchange rates, would raise households' welfare, albeit by only 0.14 per cent of the base-year GDP at market prices. An equiproportional reduction of tariffs was found to be welfare improving. Both exports and GDP at market price rose. Simulation results, however, suggested that the welfare gains from a 10 per cent equiproportional reduction in tariffs were quite small as a proportion of base-year GDP: only 0.11 per cent under the assumption of nominal wage rigidity and 0.02 per cent under the exogenously fixed aggregate employment assumption. Simulation results also showed that the equiproportional reduction of the Export Performance Benefit entitlement rates was welfare worsening. The simultaneous reductions in the Benefit entitlement rates and tariffs by the same percentage, however, were welfare augmenting. All exports except jute experienced a rise. This seemed to reveal the inadequacy of the Benefit Scheme in overcoming the deleterious effects of nominal protection on exports. The results also showed that the elimination of subsidies under the Benefit Scheme had to be accompanied by a reduction in nominal protection to raise welfare and exports.

The microcredit program in Bangladesh is a unique innovation of credit delivery designed to enhance the income generating activities of the poor. Its uniqueness is reflected in its collateral-free group-based lending strategy. The program extends small loans to poor people, mainly women, for self-employment activities thus allowing clients to achieve a better quality of life. This program is regarded as a very exciting anti-poverty tool for the poorest, especially for women. This study investigates the impact of microcredit on economic indicators as well as consumption behaviour of the borrowers. It further analyses the impact of microcredit on women’s empowerment. Primary data has been collected from the borrowers of two major microcredit institutions in Bangladesh. Alongside the borrowers, data have also been collected from non-borrowers of the same village to compare the impact between borrowers and control group. The empirical work has used sophisticated econometric techniques. Five different econometric methods - OLS, 2SLS, Probit, Tobit and SURE estimators - have been applied to the sample data of this study. The most important finding indicates that microcredit programs are effective in increasing borrowers’ income, assets and consumption but it is more pronounced towards high income borrowers than low income borrowers. It further finds that microcredit programs are empowering for women.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Text in English
Sustainable development empowers poverty-affected people and communities by strengthening their capabilities. HRDP, a Bangladeshi development agency aims to achieve this goal by offering literacy classes and primary school edu-cation. In recent years, they have encountered obstacles to their empowerment strategy. Socio-cultural mediated expectations and moral obligations impeded the capability approach. This case study seeks to research the effects of entitlement and patronage on the empowerment of people in one of their projects. To be able to understand these structures and to determine possible implications for the asset-based ap-proach, 14 interviews and two focus-group discussions with local stakeholders have been conducted in the village of Gabtali, Bangladesh. Findings revealed that people desire to invest their own assets to increase their well-being, but expect assistance for this to happen. The study suggests align-ing expectations and obligations with the capability approach and also suggests a few ideas how this could be accomplished.
Development Studies
M.A. (Development studies)