This article shows how the recently refined theory and practice of shadow pricing is relevant in devising appropriate policies for meeting the recent concerns with poverty redressal and employment generation. It also demonstrates how the problems of employment and employment generation. It also demonstrates how the problems of employment and equity are related in a series of models where public policy is subject to an increasing number of political and structural constraints. It distinguishes between the long-run perspective planning problem in which the employment problem is manifested as the choice of the optimal growth rate for the economy, and short-run policy problems of dealing with various disequilibria and distortions which force the economy inside the constrained feasibility frontier, and for whose amelioration policies based on estimates of various shadow wage rates are shown to be crucial.

Nepal embarked upon a programme of financial development, including interest rate liberalisation and reform in 1974. The aims were explicitly to increase domestic saving, investment and the efficiency of investment. This paper analyses the effects of the interest rate reform. Short-run effects have included a change in the composition of money, a substantial fall in velocity of circulation and capital inflow from India. The overall effect has been mildly expansionary. However, saving and investment have not responded. Other government policies strongly deter investment. Yet, a buoyant demand for investible funds is a prerequisite for successful interest rate reform. The necessity of simultaneous liberalisation and reform of government taxation, price, foreign trade and finance policies to raise the rate of economic growth is borne out in the case of Nepal.

This paper deals with oral contraceptors, their socio-demographic status the reasons as to why they accepted oral contraceptive, and the pattern of use. The data employed were obtained from a multi-sectoral rural project (in Sulla) undertaken by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. The “single decrement life table approach” has been used to assess the duration and pattern of use among the participants. Comulative continuation rates for all acceptors were found to be higher in Sulla than other observers have found elsewhere in the country. This is attributed to specific characteristics of the users as well as other programmes being carried out in the area. Classifying contraceptors by reasons for contraceptive use provides results which may be helpful to policy makers.  

The Bangkok agreement, signed under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), is Asia’s first multilateral trade liberalisation effort leading to the establishment of a preferential trading arrangement in the region. After tracing the roots of cooperation in trade culminating in the signing of the Agreement, this paper examines the possible distribution of benefits among the member countries. Using alternative criteria to measure the exchange of benefits, it is contended that its implementation, in its present form, is likely to lead to imbalances, particularly between the relatively developed and the less developed member countries. Accordingly some policy guidelines are suggested with a view to moderating the imbalances.

This paper attempts three things. First, it tries to put the discussion of land reform policies in its proper context by relating it to the existing agrarian structure. Secondly, it presents a critique of too-facile generalisations about the supposed benefits of certain recommended policies. Thirdly, it broaches a discussion of the political preconditions and consequences of these policies. The first three sections develop the argument that the dominant mode of production in Bangladesh agriculture is a petty peasant mode of production, whose working are modified in important ways but not yet qualitatively transformed by the dominance at a higher level of the world capitalist system. It is the fragmented nature of peasant property, rather than rent, usury capital, or merchant capital, that constitutes the main internal barrier to growth. It is argued that while policies like abolition of Sharecropping and ceiling legislation may be politically essential as a transitional programme, they cannot provide in themselves a solution to the agrarian problem. Finally the paper tries to evaluate the political feasibility of the various policies discussed, given the existing class structure and the class nature of the state, and concludes on what may be called a guardedly pessimistic note.

The paper attempts to analyse the course of development in the manufacturing sector of Bangladesh over the past three decades. Two distinct time periods, viz, pre-liberation and post-liberation periods, are distinguished for the purpose of analysis. The paper identifies the basic philosophies behind the industrialisation strategies in the two periods and analyses the manner in which actual policies pursued have been shaped by these philosophies as well as the impact of these policies on the achievements and failures of this sector. Some policy suggestions are made with respect to certain major weaknesses of this sector being felt at present. The paper concludes with some observations on the kind of general socio-political changes that would be required in order to develop a viable manufacturing sector which will also be best equipped to serve the interests of the common people.  

Recent attempts at devising normative measures of inequality are critically examined in this paper. It is argued that some of the well-known measures are operationally irrelevant in comparing inequality between situation involving unequal total incomes. In addition, a new approach is suggested for comparison of inequality in the face of both unequal total incomes and different price structures. The framework of ‘constant price comparison of named goods vectors’ which has recently been employed for real national income comparison, is used for this purpose. The operational relevance of the new approach is also critically examined.

A generalised money demand function (GMDF), based on Box-Cox parametric transformations, has been estimated for Bangladesh. This generalised form reduces to the liner, semi-log and log-linear forms, under certain restrictions. By incorporating different transformations, and by considering equilibrium and disequilibrium versions, the estimates of the generalised money demand function have been compared with those obtained from the restrictive models. A log-likelihood test has been carried out for choosing an appropriate functional form. Our results indicate that the linear form is appropriate for the equilibrium version of the money demand function, while in the disequilibrium version, none of the restricted models seems to be appropriate. The behavioural properties of the alternative models have been examined by considering the movement of income and interest rate elasticities in the sample period. The empirical performance of alternative models in terms of their predictive ability has also been examined. Theil’s U-statistic constructed for this purpose revealed the superiority of estimating the generalised money demand function.