This paper argues that Bangladesh poverty record during 1974-1984, as recently revised by S.R. Osmani and A.R. Khan, has notably positive, if not overly optimistic, aspects, which do not quite show up in their presentations. The key contentions of this paper are (a) to show that the Osmani-Khan deduction of rising poverty from the behaviour of foodgrain availability and real rice prices is logically deficient, (b) to show that contrary to their claims, real wages almost certainly did rise in the period under review, and (c) that similarly, their conclusions about the stagnation of real rice prices are based on questionable methodology.

This research empirically examines the role of credit constraint, foreign interest rates, currency depreciation, domestic inflation rate and domestic income in the demand for money in Bangladesh. This study uses post-independence quarterly data from 1974:I to 1989:IV, and employs a Savin-White (1978) econometric procedure for estimation. In addition, this study provides a battery of diagnostic tests to generate sufficient evidence on the coherence of the estimated relationships with the data. The results suggest that the economy of Bangladesh is not open, and hence foreign interest rates and currency depreciation do not play any major role in explaining the demand for money in Bangladesh. Only currency (MO) demand is significantly negatively related to domestic currency depreciation. This research also finds that in the absence of a market determined interest rate, domestic credit constraint can be used as a proxy for interest rate in money demand equation. The empirical results also suggest that the determinants are real income, lagged money stock and expected inflation.

Since the mid-nineteen fifties, two opposing schools of development thought, one known as the monetarist and the other as structuralist, have been engaged in a debate regarding the principal causes of inflation. The monetarists believe money supply is the prime cause of inflation, while the structuralists contend that inflation is a consequence of structural rigidities in developing economies and that inflation is a necessary concomitant of the major efforts launched to induce growth and development in poorer nations. In this study we have analyzed data from 1958 to 1985 for ten (10) industrial and agricultural economies to examine our hypothesis that it is the level and nature of industrialization and maturity in the financial sectors which explain divergent empirical evidence others have found in their studies. Our evidence indicates money supply is endogenous in less-developed nations while it is exogenous in the industrial economies and antecedent to inflation. In light of our findings, we suggest the IMF policy prescriptions for less-developed economies are not likely to be effective or relevant in such nations until their financial structures and levels of industrialization have improved.

The non-government Secondary Schools (NGSSs) in Bangladesh comprise more than 95 per cent of the total schools in the secondary (general) sub-sector. The study tries to relate improved availability presence of physical facilities, teachers (i.e., more educated and/or trained), financial resources and school-management (i.e., regular School Management Committee) with the performance of the NGSSs in rural Bangladesh. It is observed that the performance of the schools at the public exams is positively explained by the existence of regular School Management Committee and timely availability of salary to the teachers.