Spatial patterns of rural poverty and their relationship with welfare-influencing factors in Bangladesh

This study determines the spatial variation of rural poverty in Bangladesh and its relation to people’s livelihood assets affecting their ability to procure food. We estimated household income for over 1 million census households using a predictor model based on a nationally representative sample survey data set. We computed and mapped poverty indices for 415 rural subdistricts revealing distinct areas with high poverty incidence that correspond with ecologically depressed areas. However, other livelihood-influencing factors such as education, accessibility and services are significantly correlated with poverty. This indicates the need for continued focus on providing education and access to income-generating opportunities so that the poor can better meet their food needs. Geographically weighted regression analysis indicated spatial differences in the relative importance of various poverty-influencing factors. Multivariate clustering of the local parameter (β) estimates of the determinant factors revealed distinct spatial relationships, which have implications on poverty alleviation interventions specific to the different regions.     

Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility Reporting Practices from an Emerging Mobile Telecommunications Market

This study examines corporate social responsibility reporting practices in the rapidly growing mobile telecommunications industry in Bangladesh. This industry sector is one of the fastest growing in the world making it an attractive global investment. Using content analysis we reviewed and analysed the annual reports of four major mobile companies between 2008 and 2011. The findings reveal that mobile telecommunications companies in Bangladesh disclose social and environmental responsibility information across a range of categories. We find that these mobile companies provide significant benefits to education and health in Bangladesh and that their focus on community and development disclosures are motivated in part by seeking to maintain legitimacy in an extremely competitive industry.     

Measuring performance of knowledge‐intensive workgroups through social networks

In this article, we examine the effect of social network position, structure, and ties on the performance of knowledge‐intensive workers in dispersed occupational communities. Using structural holes and strength‐of‐tie theory, we develop a theoretical framework and a valid and reliable survey instrument. Second, we apply network and structural holes measures for understanding its association with performance. Empirical results suggest that degree centrality in a knowledge workers' professional network positively influences performance use, whereas a highly constrained professional network is detrimental to performance. The findings show that social network structure and position are important factors to consider for individual performance.     

From the Editor

This article empirically verifies the export-led growth hypothesis for Bangladesh and examines whether manufacturing exports have become a new engine of the export-led growth in Bangladesh, replacing the total exports-engine, as claimed by the so called de novo hypothesis. The empirical assessment based on the vector error correction modeling (VECM) that uses quarterly data over the period 1974–1999 suggests that both total exports and manufacturing exports have had positive and statistically significant impacts both in the long run and the short run. But an encompassing test in conjunction with the various non-nested tests suggests that total exports, as opposed to manufacturing exports in isolation, is the dominant engine of the export-led growth. This refutes the claim that manufacturing exports has become the sole determinant of the export-led growth in Bangladesh.     

CordNet: Toward a distributed behavior model for emergency response coordination

Existing studies of coordination theory in human networks have looked at coordination problems requiring stable working relationships with no environmental uncertainties. With emergency response management demanding distributed coordination in volatile situations, the designs of existing models are useful as a building block, yet flawed for application. We hypothesize that changes to interconnectedness of nodes in the network may have implications on the potential to coordinate. To test our hypotheses, we investigate survey data from state law enforcement, state emergency services, and local law enforcement by performing agency‐based (macro) and cross‐agency (micro) analysis to identify attributes of each network and coordination.     

Learning by bidding

We analyze a dynamic second‐price auction with an informed bidder and an uninformed bidder who, upon seeing a posted price, learns whether his valuation is above that price. In the essentially unique equilibrium, an informed bidder bids in the first period if her valuation is below some cutoff and bids only in the last period otherwise. An uninformed bidder bids in every period to optimally change the price unless the price is above his valuation or he is the high bidder. This model also provides a rationale behind the use of a secret reserve price in private‐value settings.     

Private banks in early Michigan, 1837–1884

Using a comprehensive new data set on private (noncorporate) banks, we examine the business and business environment of private banking and exchange brokering in the state of Michigan from 1837 to the 1880s. The Michigan experience provides an example of the effect of widespread exchange brokers in an economy. We use econometric models to explain the determinants of the numbers of private banks in the state. We find that private banks were substitutes for locally issued state bank currency and were complements with adjacent states’ bank currency. With the demise of heterogeneous currencies, private banks transitioned their core business from exchange brokering to general banking. In both the antebellum and postbellum eras, private banks tended to exist when and where larger incorporated banks did not. Following the collapse of free banking in Michigan in the antebellum years, this was virtually the entire state. During the 1860s and 1870s, corporate banks used private banks as a root source to build on.     

Does money have a role in the inflation process? Evidence from Australia

Inflation, defined as a sustained increase in the price level, is considered a monetary phenomenon, as it can be explained within the framework of money‐demand and money‐supply relationships. In the extant literature, money growth is shown to remain causally related to inflation across countries and over time, irrespective of the exchange rate regime and stability of the money‐demand function. Nevertheless, emerging literature suggests a diminishing role of money in the conduct of monetary policy for price stability, especially under inflation targeting. Monetary policy in Australia under inflation targeting since 1993 is an example of policy that denies a relationship between money growth and inflation. The proposition that money does not matter insofar as inflation is concerned seems odd in both theory and the best‐practice monetary policy for price stability. This paper uses annual data for the period 1970–2017 and quarterly data for the period 1970Q1–2015Q1. It deploys both the Johansen cointegration approach and the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration approach to investigate for Australia whether money, real output, prices and the exchange rate (non‐stationary variables) maintain the long‐run price‐level relationship that the classical monetary theory suggests in the presence of such stationary variables as the domestic and foreign interest rates. As expected, the empirical findings for Australia are consistent with the classical long‐run price‐level relationship between money, real output, prices and the exchange rate. The error‐correction model of inflation confirms the presence of a cointegral relationship among these variables; it also provides strong evidence of a short‐run causal relationship between money supply growth and inflation. On the basis of a priori theoretical predictions and empirical findings, the paper draws the conclusion that the monetary aggregate and its growth rate matter insofar as inflation is concerned, irrespective of the strategy of monetary policy for price stability.