Bangladesh

Bangladesh has made significant progress since independence in 1971, especially the introduction of wide-ranging economic reforms and the transition to democracy in the early 1990s.  However, many challenges remain as the country tries to alleviate poverty and achieve high, sustained, and equitable economic growth.

The IGC-Bangladesh programme is in the process of formulating a strategy to respond to long-standing policy questions, such as governance, non-traditional export prospects beyond garments, rationalisation of the tax system, poverty alleviation (including the impact of microcredit), and improvements in social indicators. The program is also looking at short- to medium-term work on climate change, urbanisation under intense population density and skill formation in a rapidly expanding labour force.

The IGC-Bangladesh office is hosted by the Economic Research Group in Dhaka. Below are details of current IGC activities, both country engagement and individual research projects

Bangladesh

Growth Week - current agenda
Adam Robert Green

Please download the current agenda for Growth Week, subject to modifications. Day time sessions are now closed. 4.30 pm and 6.30pm sessions are open to the public on a first-come first-serve basis.

The Effect of Seasonal Migration on Households during Food Shortages in Bangladesh (Infrastructure and Urbanisation programme and Finance programme)
Shyamal Chowdhury

Shyamal Chowdhury (Economic Research Group, University of Sydney), Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak (Yale University) and Jashim Uddin (Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation)

Effects of Climate Change on Low-lying and Flood-prone Areas: The case of Bangladesh (Climate Change, Environment and Natural Resources programme)
Raymond Guiteras

Global climate change is likely to cause rising sea levels and increased frequency and severity of flooding in low-lying areas. Raymond Guiteras (University of Maryland), Richard Hornbeck (Harvard University) and Mushfiq Mobarak (Yale University) quantify the potential impacts of climate change in Bangladesh, one of the world’s most vulnerable nations.

Marketing Stoves through Social Networks to Combat Indoor Air Pollution (Human Capital programme)
Grant Miller

Indoor air pollution (IAP) is a leading cause of disease among children, and biomass combustion (dung, brush, and wood) within the household is thought to be the main contributor. Although simple technologies to reduce IAP and black carbon emissions exist, efforts to promote the adoption of these “improved cook-stoves” have often proven ineffective.

Grant Miller (Stanford Medical School) and Mushfiq Mobarak (Yale School of Management) follow up an IGC-funded randomised intervention study that identifies socio-economic factors (price, lack of information, intra-household gender-specific preferences) that inhibit widespread cook-stove adoption in Bangladesh. The authors will re-visit the same set of villages, and strategically market to the friends, relatives and neighbors of our first round study participants in order to understand how best to use social networks to disseminate the new technology.

Arsenic contamination and its effects on nutrition and economic growth (Human Capital programme)
Mark Rosenzweig

Access to safe drinking water is essential for a healthy population, which in turn is essential for development. Working in Bangladesh, Mark Rosenzweig (Yale University) and colleagues examine new data on how arsenic in the water supply affects health, productivity and wellbeing.

Update

24th March 2010
On the distribution of climate damages in the poor world

Policy-makers increasingly agree that climate change poses a serious threat to world order. But there remains limited understanding of how the economic impact of climate change will be spread across the world, and this restricts progress on policies to mitigate the effects. John Hassler and colleagues will develop new models to estimate the different welfare effects of such policies around the world. Read more...