Economics and Finance

UPL Readers Series is intended to contribute to the process of raising the competence and the vision of students of Bangladesh so as to enable them to come to grips with pioneering first hand research and expose them to advanced literature in their respective disciplines.] This book of Readings is intended to provide students in Bangladesh an introduction, from original sources, to the concepts and tools of modern microeconomics.

To the social scientists, Bangladesh is an enigma wrapped in paradoxes. She defied conventional prophets of gloom and doom during last three decades by making significant strides in social and economic spheres. Ironically, she is deeply divided politically despite bonds of extraordinary ethnic and linguistic homogeneity. The multiple dimensions of paradoxes of governance, economy and crucial sectors like finance and water are unwrapped in the twelve essays in this volume. While unrevealing the Bangladesh conundrum, this inter-disciplinary study uncovers a number of new paradoxes.

Economic Analyses of Contemporary Issues in Bangladesh is a collection of studies by economists and other social scientists, working mostly on economic and social policies and issues in Bangladesh. This compilation of analytically well-grounded studies by established researchers covers a variety of topics such as economic growth patterns, regional convergence of per-capita income, micro-credits, natural resource management, household choice of water and sanitation facilities, capital markets, exchange rate policy, corruption, and transfer pricing by foreign investors.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the economy of Bangladesh has surprised even the most astute observers and development agencies at home and abroad. In recent years, the economy has been resilient and impressive. In a pioneering book in the early 1970's Faaland and Parkinson called Bangladesh, A Test Case for Development. Their point was that if Bangladesh could succeed, there was hope for other poor and less developed nations in the world.