A. F. M. Ataur Rahman

A causality test of the relationship between bank and credit union lending rates in local markets

Abstract This article investigates the relationship between banks and credit unions using the Granger-causality technique. For two types of consumer loans in 33 local markets in the US both credit union and bank loan rates are found to cause the other.

Substituting Wood with Nonwood Fibers in Papermaking: A Win-Win Solution for Bangladesh

Bangladesh is facing an acute shortage of fibrous raw materials for the production of pulp and paper. On the other hand, the demand for paper and paper products is increasing day by day. This study reviews the availability and suitability of nonwood raw materials for pulp production in Bangladesh. It shows that Bangladesh has a huge amount of unused jute fiber, which is highly suitable for papermaking in Bangladesh. Other agricultural wastes like rice straw, dhaincha, golpata fronds, cotton stalks, corn stalks, and kash are also available and may be used for some pulp production. Given the different properties of these different nonwood fibers, jute pulp can be used as a reinforcing agent with other nonwood pulps for the production of high quality paper in Bangladesh.

How Vulnerable are Bangladesh's Indigenous People to Climate Change?

This paper compares the vulnerabilities to climate change and climate variability of the indigenous people with the Bengali population of Bangladesh. It distinguishes between (a) individual vulnerabilities that are related to an individual’s capability to adapt to climate change and; (b) spatial vulnerabilities, that is, vulnerabilities that are related to the location of a person (like the exposure to climate change-induced disasters). While an individual’s capability to adapt to climate change is determined by many factors, some relatively simple approximation is to look at poverty, landlessness, and illiteracy. Spatial vulnerabilities are reviewed by looking at drought hazard maps, flood hazard maps, landslide hazard maps, and cyclone hazard maps. Hence, the paper compares levels of poverty, landlessness, illiteracy, and the more direct though also more subjective exposures to increased droughts, floods, landslides, and cyclones across the two population groups. The paper concludes with some broad suggestions on adaptation strategies of indigenous people as well as suggestions for policy interventions to reduce climate change-induced vulnerabilities for indigenous people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT).

Analyzing Bangladesh's Debt Sustainability Using SimSIP Debt

The ability to pay for a government-led investment strategy to achieve the millennium development goals (MDGs) is determined by the resources available to the government through economic growth, taxation, loans, and grants. Unsustainable public debts increase poverty directly through negative impacts on economic growth as well as indirectly through cuts in spending. Hence, the issue of fiscal debt sustainability is critical for achieving the MDGs. In this paper, we use the debt projection module of SimSIP Debt to project the evolution of Bangladesh’s public debt over a 15-year horizon (from fiscal year 2006 to fiscal year 2021) under three different macroeconomic scenarios and two different financing scenarios of an ambitious government-led investment strategy.

Economic Structure and Macroeconomic Uncertainty: Policy Implications for Bangladesh

This paper begins with examining Bangladesh’s economic structural transformation during 1980-2010, which is compared and contrasted with the transformation of India and Pakistan. It then calculates and compares the three countries’ macroeconomic volatility and uncertainty for the observation period (1980-2010), using unbiased volatility and uncertainty measures. It also reviews the evolution of Bangladesh’s macroeconomic uncertainty for each decade (i.e., the 1980s, 1990s and the 2000s). It shows, for example, that Bangladesh’s GDP volatility and uncertainty have been increasing over time. Reflecting on the fact that macroeconomic uncertainty has a negative impact on investment and growth, the paper derives various policy implications for Bangladesh, highlighting the importance of economic diversification, countercyclical monetary policy, smoothing external factors, and building up reserves and buffers.