Bangladesh suffers from a chronic deficit in her trade balance. The paper is an attempt to explore the imports of Bangladesh which is one of the most significant factors responsible for unfavorable trade balance of the country. The aim of the study is to intend some initiatives for an attempt to ultimately reshaping the trade balance of Bangladesh with her foreign trade partners. The paper exam...

Many studies have been conducted on the relationship between education as an indicator of human capital and economic growth in our country. However, there have been a few studies regarding the simultaneous impact of health capital and education indicators on the economic growth of the provinces up to now. In this regard, the present study examined the impact of human health indicators and educa...

Both EU and USA are dominant apparel importers in the world. In 2006, the value of world’s apparel exports to them amounted to US$ 212 billion, which represented 80% of the world’s total apperel exports. Specifically, the apparel imports of the top five members of EU; namely, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain, amounted to US$ 91 billion, accounting for 71% of the regoin’s total ...

This paper investigates two channels through which research and development (R&D) and human capital may affect regional total factor productivity growth in the manufacturing sector, using panel data on 159 EU-15 regions from 1992 to 2005. Based on the endogenous growth model of Griffith, Redding and Van Reenen (2003), we allow R&D and human capital to influence productivity growth both directly...

BACKGROUND Developing countries have witnessed economic growth as their GDP keeps increasing steadily over the years. The growth led to higher energy consumption which eventually leads to increase in air pollutions that pose a danger to human health. People's healthcare demand, in turn, increase due to the changes in the socioeconomic life and improvement in the health technology. This study is...

The purpose of this paper is to try and identify some of the factors behind the comparatively poor R&D performance of the UK in the 1990s, a decade when R&D intensity in the business sector declined consistently. We estimate an econometric model of R&D expenditure using a panel of UK manufacturing industries. Our results highlight the importance of industry characteristics such as sales and pro...

The goal of this paper is to determine the nature of the causal relationship between "social capital," as measured by household membership in formal and informal groups and household welfare in South Africa. Using a recently collected panel data set in South Africa's largest province, we estimate per capita expenditure functions and find a positive and significant impact of household-level soci...

We model the channels through which public expenditure on infrastructure influences firm value and shapes its investment decisions via both adjustment costs and marginal profitability of capital. We test these hypotheses by using a large panel of Italian firms. Empirical results show that infrastructure interacts with revenues and costs in shaping firm’s profitability of capital and influences ...