Impacts of BIMSTEC Free Trade Area: A CGE Analysis

This paper examines the impacts of BIMSTEC FTA on its member countries. GTAP model and database are used to evaluate the effects. Since most of the BIMSTEC member countries are in general labor surplus country with high unemployment of unskilled labor, to capture this fact in the analysis, the paper performed two simulations considering both neo-classical full employment situation and unemployment situation. The results suggest that a complete removal of import tariffs among the member countries generate significant welfare gains for its members. The results also imply that some of the BIMSTEC member countries experience some adverse impact in case of terms of trade, industry output,, balance of trade etc. However, the most encouraging fact is the opportunities of employment generation after full implementation of BIMSTEC FTA. Since poverty is a common phenomenon in majority of the BIMSTEC countries, employment in unskilled labor might reduce poverty within the bloc. Keywords: BIMSTEC FTA, Trade liberalization, GTAP, CGE Model

Does Economic Development Require More Income Inequality? – Is the Kuznets Curve Still Valid?

In recent years, one important policy concern among researchers and policy makers is the possible impact of income inequality on economic development, especially on the rate of economic growth. The relationship between these two economic variables is very important, particularly in less developed countries, because high income inequality is a common characteristic in less developed countries. Therefore, a link between income inequality and economic growth could be adopted for clear understanding about this relation. This link will help to take appropriate economic policies to deal with income inequality, and to enhance economic growth in less developed countries. The evidence reviewed in this paper has not found any systematic relations between income inequality and economic growth. There is a wide variation among countries, based on their levels of development, on how inequality effects future growth. Empirical studies also show that Kuznets hypothesis is not valid for many countries. Keywords: Income inequality, Economic growth, Kuznets hypothesis

South Asian Free Trade Area: Implications for Bangladesh

The current thesis has analyzed the impact of South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) on Bangladesh in terms of export generation within member countries. A standard gravity model has been used to analyze Bangladesh’s export potential using cross section data. From the estimated result, it is observed that Bangladesh has huge export potential to South Asia in general, and India in particular. If SAFTA agreement is properly implemented then Bangladesh’s exports within this region would be much higher than the estimated potential export. In terms of imports, Bangladesh has exceeded its potential level. Therefore, the expected increase in import by Bangladesh from SAFTA member countries might not be as large as the expected increase in export. But it should be mentioned that the expected results can only be achieved by free trade in real sense i.e. goods and services can move freely across countries without any tariff and non-tariff barriers.SAFTA, Gravity Model, Bangladesh’s Export Potential

Welfare and Equity Impacts of Cross-Border Factor Mobility in Bangladesh: A General Equilibrium Analysis

Bangladesh is one of the top remittance recipient countries in the world and it is the second largest source of the country’s foreign exchange earnings. However, in recent years, remittance inflows into Bangladesh have declined steadily because of real income reductions of migrants. This trend in income has increased the number of returning migrants, making domestic employment less secure. To address this issue, we develop a recursive dynamic CGE model for Bangladesh that describes the allocation of employment between domestic and foreign labor markets in response to a foreign wage premium, competition between local firms and multinational enterprises in the ready-made garments (RMG) sector, and distributional impacts of factor mobility on different household groups. Our simulation results show that returning migrants reduce household welfare by lowering wages and increasing unemployment, particularly for unskilled workers in the domestic labor market. Using counteractive policy options, we examine the impacts of FDI promotion in the RMG sector and of a human-capital development program. Based on our results, we conclude that the former policy minimizes the negative impacts of foreign labor market shocks, while a combination of both policies is more equitable.JEL Classification Codes: C68, F21, F22, O15It is gratefully acknowledged that this study was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI Grants (18J11669 and 16K03613).http://www.grips.ac.jp/list/jp/facultyinfo/hosoe_nobuhiro

South Asian Free Trade Area: Implications for Bangladesh

The current thesis has analyzed the impact of South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) on Bangladesh in terms of export generation within member countries. A standard gravity model has been used to analyze Bangladesh’s export potential using cross section data. From the estimated result, it is observed that Bangladesh has huge export potential to South Asia in general, and India in particular. If SAFTA agreement is properly implemented then Bangladesh’s exports within this region would be much higher than the estimated potential export. In terms of imports, Bangladesh has exceeded its potential level. Therefore, the expected increase in import by Bangladesh from SAFTA member countries might not be as large as the expected increase in export. But it should be mentioned that the expected results can only be achieved by free trade in real sense i.e. goods and services can move freely across countries without any tariff and non-tariff barriers

Align before Attend: Aligning Visual and Textual Features for Multimodal Hateful Content Detection

Multimodal hateful content detection is a challenging task that requires complex reasoning across visual and textual modalities. Therefore, creating a meaningful multimodal representation that effectively captures the interplay between visual and textual features through intermediate fusion is critical. Conventional fusion techniques are unable to attend to the modality-specific features effectively. Moreover, most studies exclusively concentrated on English and overlooked other low-resource languages. This paper proposes a context-aware attention framework for multimodal hateful content detection and assesses it for both English and non-English languages. The proposed approach incorporates an attention layer to meaningfully align the visual and textual features. This alignment enables selective focus on modality-specific features before fusing them. We evaluate the proposed approach on two benchmark hateful meme datasets, viz. MUTE (Bengali code-mixed) and MultiOFF (English). Evaluation results demonstrate our proposed approach's effectiveness with F1-scores of $69.7$% and $70.3$% for the MUTE and MultiOFF datasets. The scores show approximately $2.5$% and $3.2$% performance improvement over the state-of-the-art systems on these datasets. Our implementation is available at https://github.com/eftekhar-hossain/Bengali-Hateful-Memes.Comment: Accepted to EACL-SRW, 202

Study on the development of a fuzzy logic control electromagnetic actuated CVT system

This paper conducts the preliminary research of an Electromagnetic Actuated Continuously Variable Transmission (EMA-CVT) system of quarter scale. An EMA-CVT system is consisted of two pairs of electromagnetic actuators (solenoid)attached with primary and secondary pulley in order to develop the attraction and repulsive forces. The relationships between the speed ratio and electromagnetic actuation and clamping force and output torque of the CVT are established based on the kinematics of the EMA-CVT system. This study also focused on fuzzy logic based controller (FLC) to precise control for pushing and pulling the sheaves based on the feedback of the RPM sensor and slope sensor. The EMA-CVT performance with controller is 28% more than that of the EMA-CVT without controller. The solenoids of the EMA were activated by varying the current supply with the Fuzzy-Proportional-Derivative-Integrator (FPID)to maintain the non-linearity of the CVT in response of the vehicle traction torque demand. Result shows that the solenoid able to pull the plunger in the desired distance with supply current of 12.5 amp while push the plunger to the desired distance with 14.00 amp current supply to the windings when the vehicle is considered in 10% grad. The acceleration time of the ¼ scale car has been recorded as 5.5 s with the response of drive wheels torque

Study on the development of a fuzzy logic control electromagnetic actuated CVT system

Electromagnetic actuated continuously variable transmission (EMA-CVT) system consists of two pairs of electromagnetic actuators (solenoid) attached with primary and secondary pulley in order to develop the attraction and repulsive forces. Kinematics of EMA is established for electromagnetic actuation and clamping force. This study also focused on fuzzy logic based controller (FLC) to precisely control for pushing and pulling the sheaves. The EMA-CVT performance with controller is 28% more than that of without controller. The solenoids of the EMA were activated by varying the current supply with the (FPID) to maintain the non-linearity of the EMA in response of the vehicle traction torque demand. Result shows that 12.5 amp and 14.00 amp current supply is needed for pulling and pushing respectively. The acceleration time of the 1/4 scale car has been recorded as 5.5 s with the response of drive wheels torque

Bond Strength of Fusion Bonded Epoxy-Coated Reinforcement in Concrete

Fusion-bonded epoxy-coated steel is expected to extend the service life of the reinforced concrete structure in chloride-laden environments. However, the effect of coating on the bond-strength between rebar and concrete is not well understood yet. This research, therefore, studied the effect of epoxy-coating on the bond characteristics of reinforcing bars in concrete. The bond characteristics were assessed through pullout test considering variables viz. concrete strength, embedded length and bar diameter. The load was applied to reinforcing bars embedded in concrete until bond strength between the bar and concrete exceeded. Bond strength of epoxy-coated bars was compared with that of the uncoated bars. It was found that epoxy-coating reduced the bond strength approximately 25% for Ø20mm bar and 12% for Ø16mm and Ø12mm bar. As with uncoated bar, bond strength of coated bars were also increased with concrete strength. However, the bond strength ratio between coated and uncoated bars was found almost independent of concrete strength. Based on the test results, a development length modification factor of 1.33 is proposed for Ø20mm bar and 1.15 for Ø12mm and Ø16mm bar to compensate the bond strength reduction due to the epoxy coating