This paper examines the validity of long-rung Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and the so-called Generalized Purchasing Power Parity (G-PPP) in five South Asian countries, using the relatively new Johansen cointegration approach. It has been demonstrated that weak-from PPP finds considerable support from data, while the strong-form version of the hypothesis does not, irrespective of whether the official or the parallel market exchange rates are used in the analysis. Moreover, G-PPP seems to hold among these countries. The major policy implication of the findings of the paper is that if the monetary authorities in the South Asian countries wish to stabilize domestic prices or reduce persistent balance of payments deficits they must try to lower the external value of their currencies. These countries can also reap the benefits of co-operation in the core areas of trade, manufactures and services through elimination of various restrictions on regional trade.

This paper estimates rent in the inland fisheries of Bangladesh by identifying three important determinants of its distribution: the access rights of the fishers to fishing grounds of differential quality, the differentiation among the fishers in terms of ownership of fishing assets and the nature of contractual structure. Fishing grounds have been classified as those that are rich in quality and those that are poor and the fishers have been classified as those who own fishing assets and as those who do not. We present three major findings. First, the fishers as a whole received a large amount of rent. Second, access rights of the fishers to the type of water body and the degree of ownership of fishing assets are important determinants of the amount of rent they receive. Third, the distribution of rent was found more egalitarian in the richer water bodies.

The paper examines comparative advantage of different crops using two indicators net economic profitability and domestic resource cost ratio. The profitability estimates and estimated domestic cost ratio suggest that except for a few import-competing crops, Bangladesh has comparative advantage in production of most crops. There are a number of crops, e. g. vegetables, potato, cotton and onion whose financial and economic returns compare favourably with that of HYV rice. The analysis has important implications for scope and incentive for crop diversification in the country. The longer term comparative advantage, assessed in terms of expected technological innovations and changes in future world market conditions suggests that although the profitability of HYV boro is likely to worsen in future, substantial improvements in both financial and economic profitability can be expected for most other crops.The analysis seems to suggest that the menu of crops that Bangladesh can produce efficiently either for import substitution or for export is quite large. A pertinent question is how far the comparative advantage that Bangladesh agriculture enjoys can be realized as a consequence of Uruguay Round Agreements. The paper argues that the existence of comparative advantage and the liberalization under UR Agreements are not likely to generate any significant benefit to Bangladesh agriculture on their own. What is essential is to enhance agricultural productivity, develop technology and skills, and create an effective policy regime to realize the potential benefits of the emerging trading opportunities.

Recently there has been a growing concern that the poorest of the poor are not reached by the NGO interventions. This recognition has led to a number of studies that have discussed the issue of participation in NGO programmes. However, although some NGOs have several social programmes side-by-side their micro-credit interventions, all the studies, so far, have only considered the issue of non-participation of the poorest households in credit programmes. As a result, from the existing literature it is not possible to know the nature of participation in the social programmes, let alone the question of less representation by a particular group within the target population. The present paper, probably for the first time, studies the extent of participation of the extreme poor in the social programmes of the NGOs based on some primary data gathered from field survey. It is found that the social programmes of the NGOs are also less participated by the extreme poor households like its counterpart credit components. An attempt has been made here to present some empirical evidence of the extent of this exclusion and to understand the internal dynamics of participation in such programmes.