This paper is concerned with the empirical analysis of the international market for raw jute and jute manufactures. A dynamic disaggregated model is developed and estimated, and found satisfactory. The model is then used in simulation experiments to assess the impact, on both producing and consuming regions, of possible international agreements regarding the price of jute. It has been found that such agreements would typically have only limited benefits for the producing nations, as a result of the high and increasing elasticity of substitution between jute and synthetic substitutes.

The foreign trade regime of Bangladesh is characterised by fixed exchange rate, a reliance on both tariff and quota for limiting imports and ad hoc export incentive measures. It is often hypothesised that this kind of policy syndrome creates a distorted structure of incentives leading to a pattern of industrial growth which does not conform to comparative advantage. This paper attempts to test the validity of the hypothesis in the context of Bangladesh. Empirical measurement of comparative advantage in this study is based on Domestic Resource Cost (DRC). A sector is considered to enjoy comparative advantage if its DRC is positive and less than the shadow price of foreign exchange. On the basis of a survey of 62 manufacturing sectors, it is found that the DRC turns out to be negative for as many as 18 sectors, including one important sector, cigarette. There are 19 sectors with long-run DRC values positive, but higher than the shadow price of foreign exchange indicating lack of comparative advantage. Some important sectors in this group are steel, matches and paper. Only 25 sectors demonstrate long run comparative advantage. The findings, therefore, confirm the hypothesis that the pattern of industrial growth in Bangladesh does not conform to comparative advantage.

The pattern of utilisation of fertilisers on farms of different sizes and tenurial categories in two villages of Bangladesh is studied in this paper. It is found that although small farmers are late adopters they are not using less fertiliser per acre compared to large farmers in comparable crops. Total fertiliser use per acre is, however, higher on large farms mainly because of differences in crop-mix, i.e., the small farmers devote a smaller proportion of the area to high-yielding crops which are fertiliser-intensive. Tenurial status of a farm is not found to have a negative impact on fertiliser use. The findings indicate that the predominance of small farms in Bangladesh, and the crop-sharing system may not act a constraint to agricultural growth through expansion of this modern input provided credit is made available to poor cultivators on favourable terms to help them adopt purchased-input-intensive crops.