Suchergebnisse

This book is the outcome of an international conference held in the Department of Economics, Burdwan University, in 2013. The major part of the conference had been related to development, environment and livelihood issues which are also in some way linked to the theme of the ongoing DRS project in the Department, pertaining to issues on rural livelihood. The achievement of higher economic growth is one of the principal objectives of current government policies, and involves intensive resourc...

This study attempts to analyse the relation of ecological footprint (EF) and air pollutants—CO2, N2O, SO2 and CH4—with economic growth, urbanisation, foreign direct investment and energy consumption through environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) framework by employing fixed/random effect model. It involves a panel of 55 selected countries from several income groups—high, middle and low—covering the period 1990–2018. A theoretical approach has been developed to analyse the pollution intensity of population, based on decomposition analysis coherent with application of the notion of Kaya identity. The results confirmed the existence of inverted U-shaped relationship for EF and SO2 in all types of countries. The pollutants—CO2, N2O and CH4—exhibit inverse U-shaped EKC in middle- and low-income countries. Only for high-income countries, N2O model detects the existence of U-shaped curve. The study suggests that reconsideration of some economic and environmental policies is necessary to mitigate environmental degradation issues. JEL Codes: Q54, O4, O21, Q43, Q56

The paper focuses on the relative achievement of five major Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for India and Bangladesh. This is done by constructing indices with the help of the UNDP goal-post method and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) technique. From the analysis, it is revealed that these two countries have more or less successfully performed to bring about positive reforms in the case of hunger alleviation, the progress of primary education, improvement in child and maternal health, establishing better environment against sex discrepancy, etc. It also identifies the policies and programmes set by the two countries for the attainment of the respective goals. The paper shows that though these two developing nations performed quite satisfactorily to deal with deprivation afflicted issues and address the prevailing status of socio-economic malaises, the achievements were sometimes not continuous and marked by undulations.

In production and service sectors we often come across situations where females remain largely overshadowed by males both in terms of wages and productivity. Men are generally assigned jobs that require more physical work while the 'less' strenuous job is allocated to the females. However, the gender dimension of labor process in the service sector in India has remained relatively unexplored. There are certain activities in the service sector where females are more suitable than males. The service sector activities are usually divided into OAE and Establishments. In this work, an attempt has been made to segregate the productivity of females compared to that of males on the basis of both partial and complete separability models. An estimate has also been made of the female labor supply function. The results present a downward trend for female participation both in Own Account Enterprises (OAE) and Establishment. The higher the female shadow wage the lower their supply. This lends support to the supposition that female labor participation is a type of distress supply rather than a positive indicator of women's empowerment. Analysis of the National Sample Service Organization data indicates that in all the sectors women are generally paid less than men. A micro-econometric study reveals that even in firms that employ solely female labor, incidence of full-time labor is deplorably poor. It is this feature that results in women workers' lower earnings and their deprivation.