Impact of Political Risk and Uncertainty on FDI in South Asia

This study examines the potential effect of political risk and macroeconomic policy uncertainty on FDI in South Asia. To highlight the affect of political risk and macro policy uncertainty on FDI, we setup a theoretical framework based on oligopolistic and imperfect competition environment in host country. Autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) is used to examine the impact of political risk and macro economic policy uncertainty index on FDI inflows. Macroeconomic policy uncertainty and political risk indices are constructed for this purpose. The long run results show negative affect of political risk and macroeconomic policy uncertainty indices on FDI inflows. Trade openness shows positive effect on FDI inflows only in short run while in long run it has negative impact on due lack of creditability regarding consistent trade liberalization policy and high trade cost. Furthermore, the market size significantly affects the inflow of FDI both in long run and short run which shows that FDI inflows in South Asia are mainly depend on market size. South Asian economies need to focus on political and macroeconomic factors along with FDI incentives policies to attract more FDI.     

Living in the city: school friendships,diversity and the middle classes

Much of the literature on the urban middle classes describes processes of both affiliation (often to the localities) and disaffiliation (often from some of the non‐middle‐class residents). In this paper, we consider this situation from a different position, drawing on research exploring whether and how children and adults living in diverse localities develop friendships with those different to themselves in terms of social class and ethnicity. This paper focuses on the interviews with the ethnically diverse, but predominantly white British, middle‐class parent participants, considering their attitudes towards social and cultural difference. We emphasize the importance of highlighting inequalities that arise from social class and its intersection with ethnicity in analyses of complex urban populations. The paper's contribution is, first, to examine processes of clustering amongst the white British middle‐class parents, particularly in relation to social class. Second, we contrast this process, and its moments of reflection and unease, with the more deliberate and purposeful efforts of one middle‐class, Bangladeshi‐origin mother who engages in active labour to facilitate relationships across social and ethnic difference.     

Sustained Effects of the 1974–5 Famine on Infant and Child Mortality in a Rural Area of Bangladesh

In this paper the sustained effects of the 1974–75 famine on cohort mortality in a rural area of Bangladesh are studied. In the analysis, mortality rates for children born and conceived during the famine are compared with those from a post-famine cohort. In the famine-born cohort, mortality was higher during the first and second years of life, while in the famine-conceived cohort it was higher during the first year and lower during the second compared to the non-famine cohort. No significant differences in mortality by cohort were observed between the ages of 24 and 59 months. Using logistic regression, interactions between famine and socio-demographic characteristics were also studied. Three principal results emerged: first, a differential effect of the famine by socio-economic group was only present during the post-neonatal period for the famine-born cohort; secondly, children aged 12–23 months who were born to younger mothers were more adversely affected by the famine than those born to older mothers; and thirdly, although there was excess mortality for girls aged 24–59 months relative to boys of the same age in the non-famine and famine-conceived cohorts, there was little difference between mortality by sex for the famine-born.     

Forecasting demand for food in Libya—using confidence limits

Many developing countries are not self-sufficient in food production and they depend on food imports. In order to plan imports well in advance, the demand for food must be forecasted. If the forecasts are too low, the people suffer. On the other hand if the forecasts are too high—the food being a perishable commodity—resources of the country are wasted. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) undertakes such forecasts occasionally. The FAO however links the food consumption to the income of a country and then just assume future income. Such forecasts have no scientific validity and could both fall short or be grossly excessive. In this study, the methodologies of Time Series and Regression Analysis are combined to avoid any guesses. Then confidence intervals are built so that it can be stated, e.g. with 95 per cent confidence that a nation will not eat more than the amount specified. A comparison of costs is made and it is shown that a country can save millions of dollars through the method of statistical confidence limits rather than by adding arbitrary quantities to means and averages. Finally savings possible in some other developing countries, by adopting the proposed method, are tabulated.     

Women’s status and domestic violence in rural Bangladesh: Individual- and community-level effects

We explore the determinants of domestic violence in two rural areas of Bangladesh. We found increased education, higher socioeconomic status, non-Muslim religion, and extended family residence to be associated with lower risks of violence. The effects of women's status on violence was found to be highly context-specific. In the more culturally conservative area, higher individual-level women's autonomy and short-term membership in savings and credit groups were both associated with significantly elevated risks of violence, and community-level variables were unrelated to violence. In the less culturally conservative area, in contrast, individual-level women's status indicators were unrelated to the risk of violence, and community-level measures of women's status were associated with significantly lower risks of violence, presumably by reinforcing nascent normative changes in gender relations.     

Lost in Translation? Embracing the Challenges of Working With Families From a Refugee Background

This article describes the difficulties a mainstream family therapy service experienced in working with families from a refugee background. The experience of six therapists and five bicultural workers, who are also the referring agents, was captured in focus groups, and the reflections that emerged shaped a four‐part approach for working with families from a refugee background. Live consultation, either by the family therapist or bicultural worker, is suggested as a way to marry the expertise of family therapists who are not cultural ‘insiders’ with the ‘lived experience’ and cultural expertise of bicultural support workers. The process of reflecting on therapeutic failure resulted in several principles for working therapeu‐tically with families with a history of refugee trauma, unmet resettlement needs and family relationship challenges. These include maintaining a flexible approach to therapy, ascertaining a clear understanding of the referral context, defining an explicit therapeutic contract from the first session, being mindful of the important role that language plays and terminating therapy if it is contra‐indicated.     

McDonaldization, Islamic teachings, and funerary practices in Kuwait

Drawing on George Ritzer's sociological concept of McDonaldization, this article explores the transformation of burial practices in Kuwait. It is argued that traditional, religious, and private ways of dealing with death have been modernized using the fast-food model of McDonald's. This article examines Islamic teachings on burial and how that model has been applied to the traditional Muslim funerary services, including cemetery management, grave excavation, funeral prayers, burial, and condolences, to make them more efficient vis-a-vis more profitable. Based on personal observations and random interviews, the study finds that the state bureaucracy in Kuwait has made burial rituals more efficient, standardized, calculable, and controlled. Furthermore, several associated irrationalities are also considered. Findings suggest that some individuals may not be happy with these changes but there is no popular resistance to McDonaldization of the burial practices, probably due to the authoritarian and welfare nature of the State of Kuwait.     

Fertility trends in Pakistan--the decline that wasn't

The own-child method of fertility estimation was applied to data from 4 successive household surveys in Pakistan--the 1973 Housing, Economic, and Demographic Survey; the 1975 Pakistan Fertility Survey; the 1979 Population, Labor Force, and Migration Survey; and the 1981 Census. Results suggest large fertility oscillations 8-15 years before each survey, a sharp decline during the next 6 years, and a slight upturn in the year preceding the survey. However, when the 4 data sources are analyzed together, it becomes clear that the reported fertility declines are spurious. In fact, the results indicate that Pakistan's total fertility rate actually increased in the 2 decades preceding the 1981 Census, from slightly under to slightly above 7 children/women. This pattern is apparent when fertility data are aggregated over calendar years, allowing the tendency for errors from age misreporting to cancel one another out. Whatever fertility decline may have occurred has been confined to the very small group of Pakistan women with more than a primary education. It appears that births were misplaced away from the survey date, because of a pattern of exaggerations of children's ages that increases with age, thereby underestimating fertility in the 5-year period just before the survey. This analysis points to the value of juxtaposition of trends from multiple data sources. It further suggests a need for serious attention to family planning program performance in Pakistan if the Government's goal of achieving a birth rate of 36/1000 by 1988 is to be achieved.