Bücher von Mohammad Ashraf

This book primarily attempts to detect the trend in the present upshots of global warming temperature data. It has been done through the estimation of the long memory fractional parameter, using simulation technique. The study also investigates empirically the impact of global warming on global agricultural production. The simulation-result exhibits a non-trend behavior of global warming that produces a contradictory outcome of profound uncertainties against the case of true world temperature data trend. The results of empirical investigations assert that in the late 21st century unabated global warming would have a negative impact on global agricultural production in the aggregate and the impact could be severe if carbon fertilization benefits do not materialize, especially if water scarcity limits irrigation. In addition, if warming would not halt in the 2080s, but would continue on a path toward still higher global temperatures in the 22nd century, agricultural damage could be more severe. The study also shows that the composition of agricultural effects is likely to be seriously unfavorable to developing countries with the most severe losses in Africa, Latin America and India.

The idea of ¿microfinance'' is, in fact, the brainchild of Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Laureate (2006) Economics Professor of the University of Chittagong in Bangladesh, who materialized his idea into a project initiated in the village compound of ¿Jobra'' closed to that university in 1976. In 1983, the project was transformed into a full-fledged microfinance institute named as Grameen Bank (GB). Until today the age of GB is more than 30 years, but how far has the poverty been eradicated from the society is an empirical question. No long-term study has, however, found how often borrowers graduate to the status of non-poor. The present study based on empirical analysis shows that GB''s microfinance program has no statistically significant impact on increasing income of the rural poor. Based on the outcomes of other studies, it is observed that GB is no more a conduit of alleviating rural poverty, rather it appears to have a devastating negative impact on the status of the rural poor that is termed by the experts as a ¿debt trap'' or a ¿death trap'' for the rural destitute in Bangladesh.