The paper makes an attempt to profile, historically, the movements in a number of variables relating to the food economy of Bangladesh in general, and the public foodgrain distribution system (PFDS) in particular. The variables are per capita availability of rice and wheat, rationing offtake as a ratio to availability of rice and wheat, the relative roles of Statutory Rationing (SR) and Modified Rationing (MR) on the one hand, and of all other channels on the other in total offtake, rural and urban proneness of the effect of the PFDS, and finally the unit subsidy in rice and wheat distributed. It is found that, while the PFDS has markedly gained importance in the postliberation as distinct from preliberation period, per capita availability has virtually stagnated. The proportion of both SR and MR have tended to fall after the liberation, particularly rapidly for MR. PFDS expanded in 1970s in part because of the expansion of rationing effort for the civilian, military and security establishment, and in part because two mechanisms for augmenting targeted food supplies in rural areas have been introduced. One overall result has been that PFDS has been increasingly less geared toward urban beneficiaries in the 1970s and 1980s. The rural proneness of the system has betrayed a very modest tendency to improve.

This paper makes an attempt to evaluate private foreign investment in the industries sector of Bangladesh on the basis of data generated by a sample survey of some local and joint venture firms in late 1982. While deriving the results both ‘direct’ and ‘total’ balance of payments effects were estimated. It is found that the direct effects, which immediately affect the foreign exchanges are negative in most cases. The results, however, vastly improve with the inclusion of the indirect effects, although the net total balance of payments effects of the firms remain fairly moderate. What is clear is that there are some industrial sectors with positive while others with negative payments effects. This underscores the need for selectivity or a judicious choice of sectors where private foreign investment should be welcome.

This paper reports the findings of an exercise to project consumption expenditure over the Third Plan period of Bangladesh (1985-90) under some alternative assumptions about the growth in total expenditure and changes in income distribution. A log-normal expenditure function is used to project expenditure on specific items on the basis of calculated Engel elasticities. The use of log-normal function allows this paper to calculate a consistent set of elasticities. The exercise also lists some of the major items whose demands are likely to increase rapidly and calculates the magnitude of the increased demand.

The primary concern of this paper is to test whether or not risk influences the input and crop choices of small-holding farmers in developing countries. To this end efficiency conditions based on a risk neutral decision rule, expected profit maximization, are tested together with efficiency conditions based on Roy’s safety-first principle, which is based directly on considerations of risk. The tests are carried out using survey data collected in Bangladesh. The tests indicate some superiority of the safety-first rule, suggesting that considerations of risk do influence these decisions.

This paper has argued that an industrial organization based on economic justice, democratic decision process, and productive employment of labour embodied in Labour-Efficient Firms (organized, managed and owned by workers themselves) can do a better job in producing greater amounts of output and income than the purely capitalist firms. It has also been shown that the supply response of such firms will be upward sloping in most of the cases. However, the development of such firms will lead to stiff competition with the traditional capitalist firms, and hence the society will benefit in terms of greater supply of outputs, reduced prices and greater volume of employment. A development strategy, designed especially in labour surplus economic activities through such firms, has the potentiality to achieve full employment in a shorter span of time than a purely capitalist development process may take.