Determinants of the Choice of Agricultural Tenancy Contracts in Rural Bangladesh

Participation in the informal land market by farmers is always common in land scarce rural Bangladesh in response to failure of implementation of administratively based land reform system to meet increasing demand for cultivable land and to minimize discrepancy in distribution of factors at the farm level. The objective of the present study is to jointly determine the socio-economic factors underlying decision to lease-in or lease-out land and conditional on these decisions, tenant-land lord's choice of accepting and offering of share versus fixed rent contracts in rural Bangladesh agriculture. The focus is on the risk averseness and moral hazard problem for tenant land lord respectively. An empirical model of contract choice for both parties (tenants and land lords) is compared against a data set from a sample survey of IRRI and finds a mixed evidence of risk averseness among tenants and moral hazard problem among land lords. However, we find attributes of the land lord plays more important part to offer either a sharecropping contract or fixed rent contract than tenant's attributes to choose a contract between two alternatives. This indicates a monopoly power of land lords in Bangladesh in the informal tenancy market.Farm Management,

A Reassessment of Agriculture’s Role on the Rural Poverty Reduction Process in Bangladesh

In 2005, roughly 45% of the total populations of Bangladesh living below the poverty line and of them 53% are rural poor people. Therefore, a significant gain in rural poverty reduction will be crucial for Bangladesh to reach the national poverty reduction target. As 63% of the total employed people engage in some kind of agricultural activities, without pro-poor agricultural growth it is impossible for a country like Bangladesh to reduce poverty. This article attempts to analyse the impact of agricultural growth on rural poverty reduction by using time series analysis in Bangladesh during 1973 to 2003. The study shows that rural poverty reduction is possible by increased agricultural production, for which again efficient spending of government budget and skilled human capital are crucial factors. Also findings suggest that, increased the share of non-farm activities will help to poverty alleviation in rural Bangladesh.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Niemann Pick disease: a rare lysosomal storage disease

Niemann Pick Disease (NPD) is a rare autosomal recessive lysosomal storage disease characterized by lysosomal lipid storage. The disease is caused by deficiency of enzyme, acid sphingomyelinase (ASM) which leads to accumulation of sphingomyelin & other lipids in reticuloendothelial cells of various organs like liver, spleen, bone marrow, lymph node, brain, nerves and kidney. Four types of the disease have been identified i.e. A, B, C and D. We report a case of Niemann Pick Disease type C. The patient was a 2.5 years female child who presented with developmental regression, recurrent seizures, failure to thrive and hepatospleenomegaly. Bone marrow (BM) aspiration was performed which showed hypercelluler marrow with few fat laden macrophage resembling foam cell that are characteristics of this disease. BSMMU J 2022; 15(2): 141-14

Prevalence of anopheline species and their Plasmodium infection status in epidemic-prone border areas of Bangladesh

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Information related to malaria vectors is very limited in Bangladesh. In the changing environment and various <it>Anopheles </it>species may be incriminated and play role in the transmission cycle. This study was designed with an intention to identify anopheline species and possible malaria vectors in the border belt areas, where the malaria is endemic in Bangladesh.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p><it>Anopheles </it>mosquitoes were collected from three border belt areas (Lengura, Deorgachh and Matiranga) during the peak malaria transmission season (May to August). Three different methods were used: human landing catches, resting collecting by mouth aspirator and CDC light traps. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was done to detect <it>Plasmodium falciparum</it>, <it>Plasmodium vivax</it>-210 and <it>Plasmodium vivax</it>-247 circumsporozoite proteins (CSP) from the collected female species.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 634 female <it>Anopheles </it>mosquitoes belonging to 17 species were collected. <it>Anopheles vagus </it>(was the dominant species (18.6%) followed by <it>Anopheles nigerrimus </it>(14.5%) and <it>Anopheles philippinensis </it>(11.0%). Infection rate was found 2.6% within 622 mosquitoes tested with CSP-ELISA. Eight (1.3%) mosquitoes belonging to five species were positive for <it>P. falciparum</it>, seven (1.1%) mosquitoes belonging to five species were positive for <it>P. vivax </it>-210 and a single mosquito (0.2%) identified as <it>Anopheles maculatus </it>was positive for <it>P. vivax</it>-247. No mixed infection was found. Highest infection rate was found in <it>Anopheles karwari </it>(22.2%) followed by <it>An. maculatus </it>(14.3%) and <it>Anopheles barbirostris </it>(9.5%). Other positive species were <it>An. nigerrimus </it>(4.4%), <it>An. vagus </it>(4.3%), <it>Anopheles subpictus </it>(1.5%) and <it>An. philippinensis </it>(1.4%). <it>Anopheles vagus </it>and <it>An. philippinensis </it>were previously incriminated as malaria vector in Bangladesh. In contrast, <it>An. karwari</it>, <it>An. maculatus</it>, <it>An. barbirostris</it>, <it>An. nigerrimus </it>and <it>An. subpictus </it>had never previously been incriminated in Bangladesh.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Findings of this study suggested that in absence of major malaria vectors there is a possibility that other <it>Anopheles </it>species may have been playing role in malaria transmission in Bangladesh. Therefore, further studies are required with the positive mosquito species found in this study to investigate their possible role in malaria transmission in Bangladesh.</p

The cost-effectiveness of providing antenatal lifestyle advice for women who are overweight or obese: the LIMIT randomised trial

Background: Overweight and obesity during pregnancy is common, although robust evidence about the economic implications of providing an antenatal dietary and lifestyle intervention for women who are overweight or obese is lacking. We conducted a health economic evaluation in parallel with the LIMIT randomised trial. Women with a singleton pregnancy, between 10+0-20+0weeks, and BMI &ge; 25 kg/m2were randomised to Lifestyle Advice (a comprehensive antenatal dietary and lifestyle intervention) or Standard Care. The economic evaluation took the perspective of the health care system and its patients, and compared costs encountered from the additional use of resources from time of randomisation until six weeks postpartum. Increments in health outcomes for both the woman and infant were considered in the cost-effectiveness analysis. Mean costs and effects in the treatment groups allocated at randomisation were compared, and incremental cost effectiveness ratios (ICERs) and confidence intervals (95%) calculated. Bootstrapping was used to confirm the estimated confidence intervals, and to generate acceptability curves representing the probability of the intervention being cost-effective at alternative monetary equivalent values for the outcomes avoiding high infant birth weight, and respiratory distress syndrome. Analyses utilised intention to treat principles. Results: Overall, the increase in mean costs associated with providing the intervention was offset by savings associated with improved immediate neonatal outcomes, rendering the intervention cost neutral (Lifestyle Advice Group 11261.19±14573.97 versus Standard Care Group 11306.70±14562.02; p=0.094). Using a monetary value of $20,000 as a threshold value for avoiding an additional infant with birth weight above 4 kg, the probability that the antenatal intervention is cost-effective is 0.85, which increases to 0.95 when the threshold monetary value increases to$45,000. Conclusions: Providing an antenatal dietary and lifestyle intervention for pregnant women who are overweight or obese is not associated with increased costs or cost savings, but is associated with a high probability of cost effectiveness. Ongoing participant follow-up into childhood is required to determine the medium to long-term impact of the observed, short-term endpoints, to more accurately estimate the value of the intervention on risk of obesity, and associated costs and health outcomes

Agricultural land tenancy in rural Bangladesh : productivity impact and process of contract choice.

Land is a prime factor of production for an agricultural country like Bangladesh and access to land has been the major source of livelihood of farmers living in rural Bangladesh. However, access to land is governed by informal tenure arrangements which in turn affect the productivity of the farm. This thesis looks at the consequences of different contract choices relating to land tenancy arrangements in rural Bangladesh. It consists of three core chapters (Chapter 4, 5 and 6) which include: an analysis of the productivity impacts of sharecropping; an examination of the conditions under which a sharecropping contract is chosen over a fixed-rent contract; and an examination of sources of incentives whereby particular types of tenants end up contracting with particular types of landlords or choosing particular crop practices. Empirical investigations presented in this thesis add to our understanding of the nature of contructual relationships within agricultural land tenancy markets. The first academic contribution of this thesis lies in the comparison of conventional and non-conventional econometric methodologies. Particular emphasis is given to the problems of sample-selection bias and endogeneity in the contract choice that very often plague the estimation results. It is important to have an appropriate measure which controls for the biases in the econometric analysis that arise from the observability problem of certain theoretically important factors such as risk preferences, moral hazard problem which affect impact of tenure arrangements, participation decision as well as motivation for matching. This is crucial because how much certain characteristics affect the contract choice system can provide information about the functioning of a micro-economy. The works discussed herein are mostly econometric analysis, although the thesis has attempted to locate the most relevant theoretical models to explain the econometric outcomes in each chapter. The literature review chapter (Chapter 3) also has a detail explanation of the revelant theoretical models. A two-year household-level panel data set of rice farmers from rural Bangladesh is used to illustrate different corollaries of tenancy contracts. The first core chapter (Chapter 4) attempts to analyse the impact of sharecropping compared with that of owner cultivation. It illustrates the productivity differentials with special focus on the hypothesis of ‘Marshallian ineffciency’,i.e. lower efficiency on sharecropped as compared to owned plots. The main contribution of this chapter is the use of a unique regression model to evaluate the potential impact of adoption of sharecropping measured by the impact on the household’s output. A household’s decision to enter into a crop-share contract is endogenous and may affect his productivity. Therefore, a simultaneous equation model with endogenous switching regression is developed. This method enables us to estimate the causal impact of choosing sharecropping and helps to capture the treatment-effect of sharecropping by controlling for the impact of the selection problem on productivity and the adoption decision. This chapter includes preliminary results from the random-effect, the fixed-effect and the treatment-effect models to evaluate the consistency of estimation results. Our analysis reveals that in rural Bangladesh, the threat of eviction effect¹ dominates the Marshallian inefficiency and sharecroppers are no less productive compared with the owner cultivators. This chapter contributes to an understanding of the factors which generate differences in input and output intensities across two comparative tenure regimes: mixed tenant and pure tenant. Results do not find any strong support for the idea that cropping intensity is relatively higher among pure sharecroppers compared to mixed sharecroppers. The overall empirical results imply that due to non-availability of off-farm jobs, share tenants employ their optimal effort in crop production. The second core chapter (Chapter 5) attempts to identify the determinants of the choice of contracts between a crop-share contract and a fixed-rent contract. The modelling focuses on estimating how heterogeneous risk preferences and the moral hazard problem affect the choice of contracts among the participants in the land-lease market. The analysis draws from the principal-agent model where both parties are assumed to be risk averse. Though sharecropping remains widespread, its determinants are still poorly understood and the debate over the extent of risk preferences and moral hazard are far from settled. The present study jointly determines the socio-economic factors underlying the decision to rent-in/out land and the choice of tenancy contract between a crop-share contract and a fixed-rent contract using a two-stage modified Heckman selection model. The first set of results reveal that a number of socio-economic factors affect a farmer’s participation in the land-rental market and work in opposite directions regarding the decision to rent-in or rent-out land. The likelihood of renting-in land is higher for farmers with insufficient cultivable land but with higher numbers of male agricultural labourers in the household. On the other hand, the likelihood of renting-out land is higher among farmers with higher levels of cultivable land but with lower numbers of male agricultural labourers in the household. Among the households, who participate in the land-lease market as tenants, the results do not support the risk-sharing hypothesis of the agency theory as a motivation for contract choice, while there is some support that the monitoring problem affects the contract choice. The monitoring capacity of the landlord household is an important factor in choosing a particular tenancy contract. The third core chapter (Chapter 6) extends the analysis of the second core chapter with particular focus on the incentives for matching. It studies the presence of potential bias in estimated coefficients of contract choice equations arising from multiple sources of endogenous matching among the landlords, the tenants and the activities and its implications on the contract choice equation. The study finds support for the incentives for endogenous matching in two sources. These are: tenant’s observable proxies for risk aversion impacting the decision of choosing a particular crop practice; and the landlord’s observable risk preferences are significantly related to the tenant’s characteristics although there is no evidence of observed landlord characteristics impacting on the tenant’s proxies of risk aversion. Econometrically the presence of matching biases the results due to the omitted variable problem, which if not controlled for will cause an inconsistent estimation of the contract choice equation. In fact, this chapter reveals that without controlling for matching the risk-sharing is an important determinant of contract choice. However, after controlling for possible sources of matching, risk-sharing is found not to have any significant influence on choosing a particular tenancy contract. ¹Threat of eviction hypothesis: Uncertainty about contract renewal creates incentives to increase output (and therefore input use) on sharecropping plots in order to qualify for contract renewal. Testable implications would be higher or not significantly lower output on sharecropped plots than on own cultivated plots.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Economics, 201

A Reassessment of Agriculture’s Role on the Rural Poverty Reduction Process in Bangladesh

In 2005, roughly 45% of the total populations of Bangladesh living below the poverty line and of them 53% are rural poor people. Therefore, a significant gain in rural poverty reduction will be crucial for Bangladesh to reach the national poverty reduction target. As 63% of the total employed people engage in some kind of agricultural activities, without pro-poor agricultural growth it is impossible for a country like Bangladesh to reduce poverty. This article attempts to analyse the impact of agricultural growth on rural poverty reduction by using time series analysis in Bangladesh during 1973 to 2003. The study shows that rural poverty reduction is possible by increased agricultural production, for which again efficient spending of government budget and skilled human capital are crucial factors. Also findings suggest that, increased the share of non-farm activities will help to poverty alleviation in rural Bangladesh

Determinants of the Choice of Agricultural Tenancy Contracts in Rural Bangladesh

Participation in the informal land market by farmers is always common in land scarce rural Bangladesh in response to failure of implementation of administratively based land reform system to meet increasing demand for cultivable land and to minimize discrepancy in distribution of factors at the farm level. The objective of the present study is to jointly determine the socio-economic factors underlying decision to lease-in or lease-out land and conditional on these decisions, tenant-land lord's choice of accepting and offering of share versus fixed rent contracts in rural Bangladesh agriculture. The focus is on the risk averseness and moral hazard problem for tenant land lord respectively. An empirical model of contract choice for both parties (tenants and land lords) is compared against a data set from a sample survey of IRRI and finds a mixed evidence of risk averseness among tenants and moral hazard problem among land lords. However, we find attributes of the land lord plays more important part to offer either a sharecropping contract or fixed rent contract than tenant's attributes to choose a contract between two alternatives. This indicates a monopoly power of land lords in Bangladesh in the informal tenancy market