Abul Bashar Bhuiyan

Grameen microcredit and poverty alleviation: a review of Grameen Bank’s performance on poverty alleviation in Bangladesh

This paper reviews empirical evidence on the common findings from the existing literature on Grameen Bank (GB) microcredit performance on the borrowers poverty alleviation in Bangladesh. We first examine the GB microcredit impact on poverty alleviation with respect to its members income, consumption, health, childrens education and women empowerment. In general, most of the findings from the literature have shown that Bank members are doing well to reduce their vulnerability and to increase income and consumption, health improvement literacy of children and empowerment compared to non-members and controlled groups. However, this paper also examines some criticisms about the effective uses of microcredit rather than commercial mentality for profit making of microfinance institutions (MFIs).

Economy-wide Impact of Tourism in Malaysia: An Input–output Analysis

Because previous empirical research offers inconclusive evidence of the induced impact of tourism expenditure in Malaysia, this study utilizes a closed input–output model to analyze the total economy-wide impact of international tourist expenditure in Malaysia. The results reveal that international tourist expenditure has both a direct primary impact on tourism-related sectors and a significant secondary impact on other sectors of the economy. The findings of this study suggest that minimizing multiplier variation by adding value to tourism products and curbing import dependency increases the significance of the multipliers and impacts that are generated by international tourist expenditure. The results of this study also indicate that both the primary and secondary economy-wide impacts of tourism should be considered on the basis of many multipliers across various sectors, which is largely absent in the extant literature on the Malaysian tourism industry.