Behavior In Bangladesh Research Articles

Effects of Foreign Aid on GDP Growth and Fiscal Behavior: An Econometric Case Study of Bangladesh

This study estimates an aid-growth model and an aid-fiscal model to quantify the effects of foreign aid on GDP growth and fiscal behavior in Bangladesh over the 1973-1999 period. The aid-growth model applies the cointegration method to a neoclassical growth model and finds that aid has marginal effects on GDP growth, but when aid is disaggregated into loans and grants, it is found that loans significantly raise GDP growth, while grants do not. The aid-fiscal model employs a non-linear simultaneous model and finds that foreign grants mostly finance non-productive civil expenditures, but foreign loans generally finance public investment projects and human capital building programs, which eventually lead to higher output growth. 


Firm-Specific Determinants of Income Smoothing in Bangladesh: An Empirical Evaluation

The purpose of this chapter is to empirically examine the existence of income smoothing and determinants of smoothing behavior in Bangladesh. Using Eckel's (1981), Abacus (June), 28–40, “comparison of the variance of sales and profit” method, this study finds that a fair number of Bangladeshi firms engage in income smoothing. Particularly, 46 firms out of a sample of 107 firms with available data, engage in at least one type of income-smoothing behavior. Further, a logistic regression result indicates that firms characterized by sponsors having the largest ownership stake among all the equity holders and smaller firms engage more in income smoothing. Also, firms that have high debt to equity ratio engage more in smoothing behavior.

Migrants and Housing Investments: Theory and Evidence from Nigeria

The dominance of housing may reflect limitations in the menu of investment choices available to migrants in the country of origin. In many developing countries individuals face relatively few savings opportunities where productive assets (such as land farm assets) are associated with high risks and/or low rates of return. Housing investments offer unique advantages in that they are durable highly visible and associated with low risk and monitoring requirements. However there are some important drawbacks associated with housing investments. In particular where resale and rental markets for housing are not well developed migrants housing assets may be relatively illiquid and irreversible. In the next section I provide some background on general patterns of investment behavior among migrants. Here the evidence on housing investments is discussed for a rich set of migrant sending and receiving countries. In Section III I develop the conceptual framework for understanding migrants housing investment decisions. Section IV provides a description of the data sources. Section V outlines the empirical strategy. In Section VI I discuss the empirical findings. Section VII presents conclusions. (excerpt)

How Do Family Planning Workers' Visits Affect Women's Contraceptive Behavior in Bangladesh?

In Bangladesh, family planning workers’ visits reduce the costs of contraception and may increase the demand. If visits increase demand or if workers are targeting their visits, past visits by family planning workers should have a positive and significant effect on later probabilities of adopting contraceptive methods. Longitudinal data show that past visits are not significant in hazard models for adoption of contraceptive methods, whereas visits in the current round are significant. Therefore family planning workers’ visits affect women’s contraceptive behavior by decreasing the costs of contraception. Results of contraceptive discontinuation hazard models further support this hypothesis.

How do family planning workers' visits affect women's contraceptive behavior in Bangladesh?

In Bangladesh, family planning workers' visits reduce the costs of contraception and may increase the demand. If visits increase demand or if workers are targeting their visits, past visits by family planning workers should have a positive and significant effect on later probabilities of adopting contraceptive methods. Longitudinal data show that past visits are not significant in hazard models for adoption of contraceptive methods, whereas visits in the current round are significant. Therefore family planning workers' visits affect women's contraceptive behavior by decreasing the costs of contraception. Results of contraceptive discontinuation hazard models further support this hypothesis.

Gender, socioeconomic development and health-seeking behaviour in Bangladesh

In efforts to reduce gender and socioeconomic disparities in the health of populations, the provision of medical services alone is clearly inadequate. While socioeconomic development is assumed important in rectifying gender and socioeconomic inequities in health care access, service use and ultimately, outcomes, empirical evidence of its impact is limited. Using cross-sectional data from the BRAC-ICDDR,B Joint Research Project in Matlab, Bangladesh, this paper examines the impact of membership in BRAC’s integrated Rural Development Programme (RDP) on gender equity and health-seeking behaviour. Differences in health care seeking are explored by comparing a sample of households who are BRAC members with a sample of BRAC-eligible non-members. Individuals from the BRAC member group report significantly less morbidity (15-day recall) than those from the non-member group, although no gender differences in the prevalence of self-reported morbidity are apparent in either group. Sick individuals from BRAC member households tend to seek care less frequently than non-members. When treatment is sought, BRAC members rely to a greater extent on home remedies, traditional care, and unqualified allopaths than non-member households. While reported treatment seeking from qualified allopaths is more prevalent in the BRAC group, non-members use the para-professional services of community health care workers almost twice as frequently. In both BRAC member and non-member groups, women suffering illness report seeking care significantly less often than men. The policy and programmatic implications of between group and gender differences in care seeking are discussed with reference to the literature.

Social networks, ideation, and contraceptive behavior in Bangladesh: a longitudinal analysis

Longitudinal survey data from a panel of married women in Bangladesh is used to estimate the impact of a social network approach to family planning field worker communication and to test a theoretical model of behavior change that explains why women adopt modern contraceptives. Government field workers were trained to organize group discussions with women in the homes of opinion leaders located at central points in each village’s social network. A set of intervening variables, referred to collectively as ‘ideation’, are derived from diffusion of innovation and social network theory to explain how the social network approach affects contraceptive behavior. The rate of increase in modern contraceptive use was found to be five times greater among women in the social network approach than among women who were visited by field workers at home. The impact of the social network approach on modern contraceptive use was almost double that of conventional field worker visits after controlling for the effects of prior contraceptive use and intention, prior home visits, and selected socio-demographic characteristics. Both approaches had the same degree of impact on ideation. The results confirm the influence of ideation on fertility change and suggest that family planning programs would benefit from training field workers to use a social network approach.

Unofficial fees in Bangladesh: price, equity and institutional issues.

The widespread collection of unofficial fees at health facilities is a common form of rent-seeking behaviour in Bangladesh. Typically, unofficial fees come in the form of cash payments for the performance of required services, for direct purchase of drugs and medical-surgical requisites, and for service access. Using observational and interview methods, this study explores linkages between official and unofficial fees at three Bangladesh health facility levels; primary care Thana Health Complexes, secondary or district hospitals, and medical college hospitals. The study estimates payment levels for different income classes and different payor types at these facilities, thereby highlighting potential equity, price and institutional questions associated with unofficial fees. Not only does the practice have clear income and equity effects, there also appear to be direct effects upon patient satisfaction, perception of quality, and the ability to pay for health services. The article concludes with a discussion of 'rent capture' processes at Bangladesh facilities and the effect of unofficial fees in six areas of health sector reform: displaced official policies, reduced merit goods production, upward income redistribution, distorted human resource development, growth of facility inefficiency, and obstruction of market reforms.

Remittances, Investment, and Rural Asset Accumulation in Pakistan

Internal and external migration can have a profound impact on rural asset accumulation in most Third World countries. In many African, Asian, and Latin American countries the bulk of the labor force still lives in the countryside. In these countries the large difference between expected rural and urban or foreign incomes, coupled with the risk-reducing functions of migration, causes workers to migrate, either to urban centers or abroad. The remittances—defined as the money or goods sent home by migrant workers—can have a large effect on the accumulation of assets in these rural areas. For example, an inflow of external remittances to rural households at the upper end of the income distribution could increase land accumulation by the rich. In general terms the effect of remittances on asset accumulation in a rural Third World economy depends on answers to three questions: (a) Who migrates? (b) How much net income do migrants remit? and (c) What are the marginal effects of these remittances on household consumption and investment? Because of data limitations, in this article I propose to examine only the first and the third questions; other researchers have addressed the second issue. In the past surprisingly little attention has been focused on the question of the marginal effects of remittances on household consumption and investment in the rural Third World. This inattention has been due to three considerable methodological problems. The first is fungibility; because remittances are like any other form of cash income, it is difficult to associate this income source with any particular changes in household expenditure behavior. The second problem relates to the multiple-round effects of remittances on the local economy. For example, an inflow of remittances into a rural area may lead to a surge in expenditures in housing, which may, in turn, create new income and employment opportunities for the poor and unskilled. Unfortunately, however, few studies have

Changes in Reproductive Behavior in Bangladesh

Changes in Reproductive Behavior in Bangladesh

Increasing ORT use in Bangladesh.

90% of parents in Bangladesh are familiar with oral rehydration therapy (ORT) and more than 80% administer some amount of ORT fluids while still feeding their children during diarrheal episodes. Yet only about 45% administered increased ORT fluids. The concept of using the child as teacher has been developed into an ORT promotion strategy to close the gap between knowledge and behavior in Bangladesh. The strategy involves combining the Meena Initiative which promotes the potential of girls and the elimination of extreme discrimination against girls and the scout movement. Meena an enchanting heroine of a cartoon film series developed by UNICEF has been transformed into a guide and her brother Raju into a scout. The communication strategy involves the scouts promoting ORT use to nonscout students nonstudent children their own parents other parents and the community. The Promotion of ORT Project aims to communicate effectively to the targeted audiences the need to increase fluids to continue feeding and to refer children with diarrhea whose condition does not improve; to increase ORT coverage to 80% in Khulna division; and to reduce the number of diarrhea-related deaths among children under 5 years of age by 50%. ORT camps (3 days in the field and 1 day in school) will train scouts nonscout students teachers and health workers. Once they have been oriented they divide into 3 teams (4-5 scouts and nonscouts) and conduct house-to-house visits promoting ORT use. Once every house has been visited either a white flag goes up or an ORT tree is planted in a prominent location as a recognition of success. The government supports large-scale mobilization for child survival projects such as this project.

Disaster Information Delivery and People's Evacuation Behavior in Bangladesh

Disaster Information Delivery and People's Evacuation Behavior in Bangladesh

The influence of female education, labor force participation, and age at marriage on fertility behavior in Bangladesh

Abstract This paper studies the relationship between three aspects of female status (education, work experience, and age at marriage) and the use of contraception and fertility in Bangladesh. Education is found to be the variable most strongly correlated with use of contraception and is also one of the significant variables explaining fertility behavior. The most important factor explaining fertility behavior is age at marriage. The higher the age at marriage, the lower the fertility, when all other factors are held constant. Work experience has very little or no effect on current use of contraception and fertility.

The influence of female education, labor force participation, and age at marriage on fertility behavior in Bangladesh.

Data from the 1975 Bangladesh Fertility Survey were used to analyze the relationship between female education, labor force participation, and age at marriage on the 1 hand and fertility and use of contraception on the other hand. It was hypothesized that the 3 aspects of women's status would be positively associated with contraceptive use and negatively correlated with fertility. Education emerged as the variable most strongly correlated with contraceptive use; current use of contraception ranged from 8% among those with no education to 42% among women with a secondary education or above. A similar pattern was noted between age at marriage and contraceptive use. Current use increased from 11% among women married below the age of 15 years to 32% among those who married at age 22 years or above. On the other hand, current use of contraception was only 2 percentage points higher among women who had ever worked (14%) than among those who had never worked (12%). Age at marriage was found to be the most important variable explaining fertility behavior. Women who married under the age of 15 years had an average of 4.22 children compared to 1.77 among those who married at 20-21 years of age and 2.65 among those marrying at age 22 years or above. The number of children ever born declined from 4.15 among women with no education to 1.96 among those with at least a secondary school education. Labor force participation did not exert as strong an effect on fertility: women who had ever worked had an average of 4.24 children compared with 3.85 among those who had never worked. The general associations noted in this study were stronger among urban than rural women. These results point to a need to improve women's status, particularly female education, and also to raise the age at marriage to obtain more widespread use of contraception and lower fertility levels.

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC & HERDING BEHAVIOR : EVIDENCE FROM BANGLADESH CAPITAL MARKET

This study aims to detect herding behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic, compare investor trading behavior pre (2015 to 2019) and post (2020 to 2022) pandemic, and examine how investors react in panic and uncertainty. Current asset pricing theory states that cross-sectional returns should reflect systematic risks like stock prices, where Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) betas are often viewed as return volatility, but they do not account for price volatility. To reflect the uncertainty, CAPM and Asset pricing theory are not sufficient so the gap is filled by behavioral finance that examines investors’ personalities and trading behaviors to explain market swings. It examines which stock price data influences investors’ decisions that is depicted by herding behavior. People “herd” when they do not make individual decisions. Unpredictability, worry, and panic often cause such behavior and COVID-19 epidemic worsened such factors that hurt global economy and stock markets. Financial data cannot reveal herding behavior for which two models, Cross-sectional standard deviation (CSSD) and Cross-sectional absolute deviation (CSAD), acknowledged by Christie and Huang (1995), are used to identify herding behavior in Bangladesh’s capital market during the COVID-19 pandemic. CSSD uses standard deviation to understand investor herd behavior, while CSAD uses absolute deviation. As mentioned in the literature review from the journal of Christie and Huang (1995) that the CSSD model and CSAD model will provide a conflicting result, the above finding shows the same because in CSSD model, no herding behavior is found but in the CSAD model, the herding behavior is found in the bullish markets for the year 2020 and in the bearish markets from 2015 to 2022.

The Female Labor Force in Metropolitan Areas: An International Comparison

The loss of womanpower in conspicuous leisure activities, unproductive household tasks, or various forms of "disguised unemployment," which can be seen in every society, is nowhere more evident than in the cities of underdeveloped countries. In urban areas of Egypt, Iran, and Pakistan, for example, less than 15 percent of all women aged 15-64 are in the labor force. In many cities of Latin America and the Caribbean, to be sure, over 30 percent of all working-age women are in the labor force, but from one-third to half of those who work are employed in domestic service. If more effective use is to be made of the potential womanpower in urban areas, it will be necessary both to increase women's work-participation rates and to channel their labor into genuinely productive tasks. The general trends of development of a modern women's labor force, some effects of this development, and some sources of resistance to it are considered in this paper.