Syed Basher

On May 23, 2020, The Economist magazine ran a story about the impact of Covid-19 on the poor people, with a title that anyone would have thought impossible just a few months ago: “Covid-19 is undoing years of progress in curbing global poverty.”

The readymade garments (RMG) industry is vital to Bangladesh economy. It contributes 84 percent of the total exports—nearly 13 percent of the GDP—and employs some four million workers.

It is still widely believed that depreciation of taka vis-à-vis foreign currencies—especially US dollar—will boost Bangladesh’s export earnings. This is true only if our exports are priced or invoiced in Bangladeshi taka. For example, if a shirt made in Bangladesh is invoiced at Tk 1,000, at an exchange rate of USD 1 = Tk 85, the shirt will cost USD 11.76 in the international market.

After I joined a leading private university in 2015, a question that puzzled me was why so many public university teachers are teaching at private universities.

Everyday, both in print and digital media, scary stories emerge about robots killing jobs.

Many of the industrialised economies are going through an unprecedented demographic change called “population aging”.

This is the subtitle of a book by William Baumol, an American economist who died recently at age 95. The title of the book is The Cost Disease. In his book, Baumol made several interesting arguments that have significant implications for public welfare in Bangladesh.

Suppose a doctoral student at a US university is writing her dissertation on an economic issue of Bangladesh, and if the required data is available on a BBS website, she can conveniently access it. The net result is that Bangladesh can benefit from new scientific research financed by the US taxpayers' money.