Foreign Direct Investments In Bangladesh: Some Recent Trends And Implications

For many developing nations, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has been viewed as a powerful instrument for economic development.  In particular, FDI has become a major source of capital formation and an instrument for facilitating knowledge transfer.  Expansion of FDI has led countries to build physical capital, increase employment, trade, and gross domestic product, and consequently helped to eradicate poverty.  Using secondary data for Bangladesh, this paper investigates the effect of FDI on some major economic indicators of growth and examines the functional relationship between FDI and indicators

Flood-tolerant rice reduces yield variability and raises expected yield, differentially benefitting socially disadvantaged groups.

Approximately 30% of the cultivated rice area in India is prone to crop damage from prolonged flooding. We use a randomized field experiment in 128 villages of Orissa India to show that Swarna-Sub1, a recently released submergence-tolerant rice variety, has significant positive impacts on rice yield when fields are submerged for 7 to 14 days with no yield penalty without flooding. We estimate that Swarna-Sub1 offers an approximate 45% increase in yields over the current popular variety when fields are submerged for 10 days. We show additionally that low-lying areas prone to flooding tend to be more heavily occupied by people belonging to lower caste social groups. Thus, a policy relevant implication of our findings is that flood-tolerant rice can deliver both efficiency gains, through reduced yield variability and higher expected yield, and equity gains in disproportionately benefiting the most marginal group of farmers

Development and Validation of Phonetically Balanced Speech Perception Test in Urdu Language

Purpose: The tool of speech or language assessment is required to be linguistically and culturally appropriate for the individual being tested. Testing in native language is essential if an audiologist or speech and language therapist wants to test the speech perception capacities of an individual and to use the data for further planning and monitoring of the therapeutic efforts. Numerous speech perception tests are available in different international and regional languages. But in Urdu language, no such tool is available to the clinicians to check the speech perception abilities of hearing impaired individuals. Therefore, this study was designed to: (1) estimating the frequency of occurrence of Urdu consonants; (2) developing a speech perception test in Urdu Language for children with hearing impairment; and (3) establishing the reliability and validity of the test. Methods: This study was carried out in three stages. In stage I, structural attributes of the test were planned. During stage II, firstly mean phonetic occurrence of each consonant in Urdu language was calculated. Secondly, a pool of most common image-able Urdu words was generated from which a 25 word-list for identification task was created. Finally, the speech perception test was finalized after establishing its content validity. In stage III, reliability and validity of the test was established through a pilot study conducted via randomly selected 100 normally hearing and 30 hearing impaired subjects. Results: The Urdu speech perception test is a non-verbal, norm referenced test. Content, predictive and construct validity was established. Split half reliability of the test was 0.798 and test-retest reliability was 0.881 which was found to be significant at α = 0.05 and α = 0.01 level of significance respectively. Inter-scorer reliability was 0.598 which was significant at α = 0.10 level. Conclusions: The Urdu speech perception test is a reliable, validated and linguistically appropriate non verbal tool to check the speech perception abilities of children with hearing impairment

Entrepreneurship through Bricolage. A Study of Displaced Entrepreneurs at Times of War and Conflict

War and conflict brings about adverse changes for those who are displaced. How do entrepreneurial individuals respond to such adversity to either set-up, or continue with their existing entrepreneurial endeavours that would improve their own livelihood or that of others who have been affected? Whilst previous studies have found local knowledge, networks and resources to be crucial in the development of ventures in the war and conflict context, alienation from mainstream society within the host location often means that to succeed, those who are displaced require alternative strategies and approaches. Through examining the entrepreneurship ventures of six internally displaced entrepreneurs in Pakistan, our study identifies that entrepreneurial individuals find different ways to adapt to the new order, with both internal and external bricolage becoming the key strategies deployed to either re-establish their previous business(es) or to develop new endeavour(s) in the host location. To compensate for lack of local knowledge, networks and resources, we found that entrepreneurs followed closely their previous paths in their bricolage attempts, relying on reconfigurations of their pre-existing competencies, as well as utilising pre-established and clandestine networks

Ruin Theory for Dynamic Spectrum Allocation in LTE-U Networks

LTE in the unlicensed band (LTE-U) is a promising solution to overcome the scarcity of the wireless spectrum. However, to reap the benefits of LTE-U, it is essential to maintain its effective coexistence with WiFi systems. Such a coexistence, hence, constitutes a major challenge for LTE-U deployment. In this paper, the problem of unlicensed spectrum sharing among WiFi and LTE-U system is studied. In particular, a fair time sharing model based on \emph{ruin theory} is proposed to share redundant spectral resources from the unlicensed band with LTE-U without jeopardizing the performance of the WiFi system. Fairness among both WiFi and LTE-U is maintained by applying the concept of the probability of ruin. In particular, the probability of ruin is used to perform efficient duty-cycle allocation in LTE-U, so as to provide fairness to the WiFi system and maintain certain WiFi performance. Simulation results show that the proposed ruin-based algorithm provides better fairness to the WiFi system as compared to equal duty-cycle sharing among WiFi and LTE-U.Comment: Accepted in IEEE Communications Letters (09-Dec 2018

The co-creation of social ventures through bricolage, for the displaced, by the displaced

Purpose Although scholars have investigated how social entrepreneurs create and develop social enterprises in the penurious stable environment, how they are created in the penurious unstable environment has yet been overlooked. The purpose of this paper is to address this research gap by exploring how internally displaced individuals, despite the lack of resources, create and develop a social enterprise to serve the other displaced population in the war and conflict zones. Design/methodology/approach Underpinned by a biographical research design, in-depth interviews with internally displaced individuals who have created social enterprises in the war and conflict zones were undertaken. Three social entrepreneurs were chosen for this study from three different social enterprises that are created by internally displaced individuals to serve the other internally displaced people of three different countries, namely, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Syria. Findings The single and cross-case analysis found that internally displaced individuals deploy bricolage strategy, for example, reconfiguration of pre-existing resources and competencies (both internal and external), to start up a social venture in the war and conflict zones. They utilise pre-existing internal resources, mainly human capital, and external resources, through a frugal approach towards resources acquisitions. The authors also found that the displaced social entrepreneurs utilise resources of other displaced individuals, for example, networks, volunteers, local knowledge and financial supports mainly from older arrivals, and develop their own enterprise ecosystem within the host location to co-create and co-develop social enterprise and social values for all of them. Research limitations/implications The findings show that internally displaced individuals utilise bricolage strategies to create and develop socially entrepreneurial venture to serve other internally displaced individuals in the war and conflict zones. As the findings are based on three case studies, for confirmatory approach, a quantitative study with a large sample size is necessary. Furthermore, as the differences in economic, cultural and linguistic in between the home and host locations can have impact on the creation and the development of a social venture, they should be considered in the future studies. Originality/value This study contributes to the limited literature and studies on social entrepreneurship, specifically, to the context of unstable penurious environment. It also contributes to the literature on bricolage by extending its application from penurious stable environment to the penurious unstable environment. By exploring what and how internal and external resources are utilised to create and develop a socially entrepreneurial venture in a war and conflict zones, this study has added value to the literature on not only bricolage but also entrepreneurship in war and conflict zones