This paper studies the effect of fiscal and political decentralisation on the death toll by disasters for up to 46 developing and transitional economies from 1974 to 2004.  The results show that elected government at the local level does not help mitigate disaster risk. This study underscores the importance of the joint effects of different forms of decentralisation and shows that when political decentralisation is accompanied by fiscal decentralisation, it significantly reduces the number of total deaths due to natural disaster for the lowest tier of the government. Greater fiscal responsibility is argued to make local elected government more responsive to the vulnerable people.

This paper empirically investigates the impact of stock market crash on the volatility of Dhaka Stock Exchange stock return of Bangladesh with GARCH-type framework by using data of daily closing stock price indices of (DSE General Index) over the period from 9 November 2004 to 31 July 2013. The results of GARCH-M (1,1) model conclude that conditional standard deviation is negatively related to the level of returns. While this result is not consistent with the theory of a positive risk premium on stock indices, in special circumstances investors may not claim higher risk premium if they are competent enough to bear risk at times of specific volatility. Moreover, the model also confirms that stock market crash affected the volatility of DSE General Index return and there is a propensity for the volatility to erode over time.

Production of oilseeds is very important in Bangladesh, since a lot of foreign exchange is spent for importing edible oils and oilseeds to meet domestic demand. Up-to-date and nationally representative data and information are scarce. Therefore, this paper analyses the profitability and comparative advantage of oilseed production in Bangladesh. It covers a total of 1,980 farms collected from 11 oilseed growing districts, namely Manikgonj, Faridpur, Tangail, Mymensingh, Rajshahi, Pabna, Dinajpur, Noakhali, Luxmipur, Comilla and Jessore. Four oilseed crops, namely mustard, sesame, groundnut and soybean are considered for the study. The production of local variety sesame (Til-6) and soybean is marginally profitable to the farmers compared to competing crops except Aus rice. The country has comparative advantage in producing oilseeds for import substitution since the DRC estimates for selected oilseed crops are less than unity. However, mustard production is not so advantageous for Bangladesh since the value of DRC is close to unity.