Does Women?s Status Matter for Food Security? Evidence from Bangladesh

Using data from a survey of Bangladeshi households, this paper investigates the link between female status and food security. Employing three different indicators of female status ? husband?s and wife?s assets brought at marriage, female share of household income and a composite index of women empowerment, the paper finds evidence of women?s status influencing food security. By raising the level of food security for some disadvantaged women?s groups female status is also found to be instrumental in mitigating the extent of gender-based within-household discrimination. The findings reveal that inferences drawn about food security by observing the changes in various non-food budget shares could be misleading or overemphasized.food security, women?s status, intra-household distribution, gender discrimination, Bangladesh

Domestic Violence Against Women: Its Determinants and Implications for Gender Resource Allocation

Using data from a survey of Bangladeshi households, this paper explores the determinants of domestic violence against women as well as its implications for the resources allocated to women. The findings reveal that higher education of women and that of their husbands, and better socioeconomic status of households are crucial in reducing the risk of violence, while, contrary to general perceptions, women?s involvement in income generating activities and participation in NGO programmes do not have any similar effects. When resources allocated to women with and without the experiences of domestic violence are compared, no statistically significant difference between the mean calories consumed by the two groups can be found. However, there is robust evidence of women subject to domestic violence receiving significantly lower calories from the preferred food items such as, fish, meat, eggs, drinks and dairy products. Furthermore, this group of women is allocated significantly lower amounts of household food and non-food expenses compared to their counterparts who do not report domestic violence against them.domestic violence, intra-household distribution, Bangladesh

Seluge++: A Secure Over-the-Air Programming Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks

Over-the-air dissemination of code updates in wireless sensor networks have been researchers’ point of interest in the last few years, and, more importantly, security challenges toward the remote propagation of code updating have occupied the majority of efforts in this context. Many security models have been proposed to establish a balance between the energy consumption and security strength, having their concentration on the constrained nature of wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes. For authentication purposes, most of them have used a Merkle hash tree to avoid using multiple public cryptography operations. These models mostly have assumed an environment in which security has to be at a standard level. Therefore, they have not investigated the tree structure for mission-critical situations in which security has to be at the maximum possible level (e.g., military applications, healthcare). Considering this, we investigate existing security models used in over-the-air dissemination of code updates for possible vulnerabilities, and then, we provide a set of countermeasures, correspondingly named Security Model Requirements. Based on the investigation, we concentrate on Seluge, one of the existing over-the-air programming schemes, and we propose an improved version of it, named Seluge++, which complies with the Security Model Requirements and replaces the use of the inefficient Merkle tree with a novel method. Analytical and simulation results show the improvements in Seluge++ compared to Seluge

WTO and regional trade negotiation outcomes: quantitative assessments of potential implications on Bangladesh

Despite being somewhat paradoxical, the world has in recent times witnessed ambitious multilateral trade negotiations along with a proliferation of regional trading blocs. Almost all countries are now involved in both types of trading arrangements, with Bangladesh actively participating in several important trade talks under the World Trade Oganisation (WTO) alongside its commitments to the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA). Different multilateral and regional trade negotiations have, however, different implications. For example, while the liberalisation of global agricultural trade – by reducing subsidies in rich countries and thereby causing prices to rise – will benefit many developing country farmers, it may hurl a formidable challenge for the net food importing countries in ensuring food security for their poor populations. Similarly, WTO negotiations in non-agricultural goods aim at improving market access for many, but for the least developed countries, including Bangladesh, currently enjoying tariff preferences in a large range of products in major markets, the ensuing outcomes could lead to preference erosion, undermining their competitiveness. Regional trading arrangements can also be challenging as they tend to replace global imports with less efficient regional supplies resulting in adverse welfare consequences. Effective trade negotiations partly depend on a priori assessments of possible negotiation outcomes. As such, it is very important to provide the policymakers and trade negotiators with informed inputs on the potential implications of negotiating issues. Since trade negotiations comprise subject matters of conflicting interests – often amongst countries at comparable levels of development that otherwise share and support similar views and positions – only country-specific objective analyses based on appropriate research methods can inform the negotiators in the best possible way. This book is an endeavour in that direction. It focuses on some of the major issues in the on-going multilateral and regional trade negotiations, and employs state-of-the-art analytical tools to empirically assess their likely implications for Bangladesh. While the analyses and results presented would be useful for policymakers and trade negotiators, this volume would also be of interest to trade analysts involved in empirical research

WTO and regional trade negotiation outcomes: quantitative assessments of potential implications on Bangladesh

Despite being somewhat paradoxical, the world has in recent times witnessed ambitious multilateral trade negotiations along with a proliferation of regional trading blocs. Almost all countries are now involved in both types of trading arrangements, with Bangladesh actively participating in several important trade talks under the World Trade Oganisation (WTO) alongside its commitments to the South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA). Different multilateral and regional trade negotiations have, however, different implications. For example, while the liberalisation of global agricultural trade – by reducing subsidies in rich countries and thereby causing prices to rise – will benefit many developing country farmers, it may hurl a formidable challenge for the net food importing countries in ensuring food security for their poor populations. Similarly, WTO negotiations in non-agricultural goods aim at improving market access for many, but for the least developed countries, including Bangladesh, currently enjoying tariff preferences in a large range of products in major markets, the ensuing outcomes could lead to preference erosion, undermining their competitiveness. Regional trading arrangements can also be challenging as they tend to replace global imports with less efficient regional supplies resulting in adverse welfare consequences. Effective trade negotiations partly depend on a priori assessments of possible negotiation outcomes. As such, it is very important to provide the policymakers and trade negotiators with informed inputs on the potential implications of negotiating issues. Since trade negotiations comprise subject matters of conflicting interests – often amongst countries at comparable levels of development that otherwise share and support similar views and positions – only country-specific objective analyses based on appropriate research methods can inform the negotiators in the best possible way. This book is an endeavour in that direction. It focuses on some of the major issues in the on-going multilateral and regional trade negotiations, and employs state-of-the-art analytical tools to empirically assess their likely implications for Bangladesh. While the analyses and results presented would be useful for policymakers and trade negotiators, this volume would also be of interest to trade analysts involved in empirical research

Towards A Bi-lateral FTA with China: Potential Implications and Negotiation Strategies for Bangladesh

The growing relative significance of China in the global economy and international trade has been a defining feature of globalization over the past three decades. Trade with China, which continues to grow quite strongly, offers new opportunities for specialization, efficiency gains, export market diversification and attracting investments. China is also a prominent force in global supply chains, forming networks of cross-border suppliers. It has now become an important source of technical and financial assistance, particularly in developing large-scale infrastructures. Very recently, China has offered an extended duty-free market access of 97.5% of tariff lines to Bangladesh going much beyond of about 62%. However, this kind of unilateral offer remains valid until a country’s LDC graduation. Bangladesh will have to ensure continuity of the improved market access offer to generate and sustain the interest of investors who would want to take advantage of the preferences. A negotiated trading arrangement (e.g. FTA) with China will thus remain an important issue in the medium to longer terms

Economic Partnership Agreements: Assessing Potential Implications from Some Alternative Scenarios

This paper has evaluated the possible effects of the Economic Partnership Agreement using a global general equilibrium modelling framework, namely the GTAP model. The latest version of the GTAP database (version 6.22) has been employed as a benchmark database. The study has explored the implications of different EPA scenarios (in terms of changes in GDP, exports, and other measures for welfare) for ACP countries (both developing and LDCs), based on the sample of countries in the database

Economic Partnership Agreements: Assessing Potential Implications from Some Alternative Scenarios

This paper has evaluated the possible effects of the Economic Partnership Agreement using a global general equilibrium modelling framework, namely the GTAP model. The latest version of the GTAP database (version 6.22) has been employed as a benchmark database. The study has explored the implications of different EPA scenarios (in terms of changes in GDP, exports, and other measures for welfare) for ACP countries (both developing and LDCs), based on the sample of countries in the database