In 2010, Bangladesh enacted rules mandating rooftop systems for consumers seeking to join the grid system for new domestic, industrial, and commercial electricity connections. After a decade, the first net metering policy was launched with further revisions of policies aimed at widening the...

This paper provides the first evidence that children's economic preferences vary systematically with parental mental health. Using experimentally elicited measures of economic preferences from more than 4,500 children in Bangladesh, we document that children of parents with indications of mental...

Die Außenpolitik Indiens ist von einem Paradox geprägt. Das Land hat in letzter Zeit auf internationaler Bühne an Einfluss gewonnen, zugleich aber im regionalen Kontext an Bedeutung verloren. Seit Mitte der 2010er Jahre konnte China seine wirtschaftliche und politische Position in Südasien...

This paper provides the first evidence that children’s economic preferences vary systematically with parental mental health. Using experimentally elicited measures of economic preferences from more than 4,500 children in Bangladesh, we document that children of parents with indications of...

This paper provides the first evidence that children's economic preferences vary systematically with parental mental health. Using experimentally elicited measures of economic preferences from more than 4,500 children in Bangladesh, we document that children of parents with indications of mental...

Bangladesh is currently navigating a complex economic transition marked by high inflation, declining foreign exchange reserves, vulnerabilities in the financial sector and the impending graduation from Least Developed Country status in 2026. The labour market also faces persistent and...

Achieving middle-income status will require Bangladesh to restore lasting macroeconomic and financial stability and implement bold reforms to strengthen institutions and foster job creation, especially for youth. Persistently low fiscal revenues, weaknesses in the banking sector, stubbornly high...

Die Außenpolitik Indiens ist von einem Paradox geprägt. Das Land hat in letzter Zeit auf internationaler Bühne an Einfluss gewonnen, zugleich aber im regionalen Kontext an Bedeutung verloren. Seit Mitte der 2010er Jahre konnte China seine wirtschaftliche und politische Position in Südasien...

The haor (Ox-bow Lake) region in Bangladesh, comprising seven districts, is rich in fishing, biodiversity, and boro-rice cultivation. However, its people are poorer due to wet monsoon seasonality. This study evaluates the joint impact of microcredit facilities and social safety net programs...

Die Parlamentswahlen in Bangladesch am 12. Februar 2026 markierten eine Zäsur in der neueren Geschichte des Landes. Im August 2024 war Premierministerin Sheikh Hasina gestürzt worden, die mit einer Unterbrechung insgesamt 20 Jahre amtiert hatte. Anschließend übernahm eine Interimsregierung...

The parliamentary elections held in Bangladesh on 12 February 2026 marked a turn­ing point in the country’s recent history. In August 2024, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who had served for a total of 20 years, with one interruption, was removed from office. An interim government led by Nobel...

Die Parlamentswahlen in Bangladesch am 12. Februar 2026 markierten eine Zäsur in der neueren Geschichte des Landes. Im August 2024 war Premierministerin Sheikh Hasina gestürzt worden, die mit einer Unterbrechung insgesamt 20 Jahre amtiert hatte. Anschließend übernahm eine Interimsregierung...

This 2025 Poverty and Equity Assessment examines Bangladesh’s progress in poverty reduction and inclusive development from 2010 to 2022. Poverty in Bangladesh declined between 2010 and 2022, but the pace of progress slowed after 2016, and over one-third of the population remained vulnerable to...

The revised Country Private Sector Diagnostic (CPSD) reports seek to unlock private sector–led growth and investment. Prepared jointly by the institutions of the World Bank Group, each report discusses the overall business environment within a country and provides an analysis of specific...

Using primary data collected from 3,493 households in the Faridpur district of Bangladesh, this study investigates the factors influencing farmers' preference for high-yielding rice varieties over other beneficial traits such as nutritional value, stress tolerance, and input efficiency....

Zinc deficiency poses a significant health challenge in Bangladesh, particularly among preschool-aged children and nonpregnant, nonlactating women, To address this issue, the government of Bangladesh has made efforts since 2013 to promote the cultivation and consumption of zinc-biofortified rice...

Relocating refugees to remote purpose-built settlements offers an alternative to hosting refugees in traditional camps or local communities. Yet, its consequences remain poorly understood. This paper evaluates the well-being and fiscal implications of relocating Rohingya refugees from the...

Identifying sensitive periods in which the returns to investments into skills are especially high is challenging, but crucial for an effective and efficient timing of parental or public investments aimed at fostering children's skills. We can detect sensitive periods with a novel design by...

We investigate how strongly the local environment beyond the family can contribute to understanding the formation of children's economic preferences. Building on precise geolocation data for around 6000 children, we use fixed effects, spatial autoregressive models and Kriging to capture the...

Begum et al. (2018) study gender bias in parental attitudes using an experimental approach in rural Bangladesh. Households are reported as randomly assigned to treatment conditions in a lab-in-the-field allocation task. We show that the group assignment was inherited from Islam (2019), a...

In an increasingly interconnected global landscape, diaspora communities maintain complex transnational ties with their homelands, influencing local religious practices and institutions. This study examines how UK-Bangladesh diaspora connections shape religious identity formation and social...

This study examines the discursive positioning of motherhood in navigating caregiving responsibilities and professional aspirations, employing Q-methodology to explore how contemporary maternal identities are negotiated within varying social expectations. Through the analysis of Q-sorts from 46...

BRAC has over 40,000 schools worldwide. It is widely praised for serving disadvantaged students and for matching or outperforming government schools. Using data that we collected from Dhaka's slums, we test these claims. We find that BRAC serves the most disadvantaged students in our survey, but...

Innovations in big data and algorithms are enabling new approaches to target interventions at scale. We compare the accuracy of three different systems for identifying the poor to receive benefit transfers - proxy means-testing, nominations from community members, and an algorithmic approach...

State formation through secession often requires two critical steps: building mass support for independence, and engaging in violent conflict against a state resisting territorial loss. Combining satellite data with archival sources, we statistically document how exposure to the 1970 Bhola...

Currently, climate change is a burning concern all over the world. It is causing immense pressure on the economy of developing countries due to the adverse climatic events caused by climate change. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, being the top justification for causing climate change, has been...

This paper examines the impact of agent banking activities, a recent FinTech development, influencing the profitability and financial outcomes of commercial banks operating in Bangladesh, as agent banking has been receiving significant global attention due to its technology-driven approach,...

The study examines the dynamics of herding behavior in relation to macroeconomic shocks and monetary policy shifts in the Bangladesh equity market. By employing robust empirical methodologies across distinct market states including bullish, bearish, crisis, extended crisis, and COVID-19 phases,...

The Women's Economic Empowerment in Bangladesh: An Evidence-Guided Toolkit for More Inclusive Policies report provides an examination of gender disparities in economic empowerment in Bangladesh. It aims to shed light on the current state of gender inequality by analyzing rich microdata from...

As increasingly frequent extreme weather events disrupt lives, institutions are turning to early-warning systems and advance preparation to accelerate aid delivery. A randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh and Nepal tested whether providing cash within days of a flood leads to greater...

Bangladesh has demonstrated how investment in coastal flood protection saves lives, reduces economic losses, and protects development gains. Yet, its cost effectiveness depends on the design standards, which are currently selected on a project-by-project basis. This is because at present, there...

The Country Opinion Survey in Bangladesh assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in better understanding how stakeholders in Bangladesh perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private...

Machine learning (ML) algorithms are effective techniques for predicting households' poverty conditions so that they might benefit from poverty alleviation programs. The study's primary objective is to find out the determinants of poverty and select the best ML model to predict the poverty...

The purpose of this report is to provide information on political developments and the human rights situation in Bangladesh under the interim government, which took office following student-led protests in July-August 2024. The report examines the interim government, its mandate and reform...

This paper aims to examine the effect of nutrition training on the adoption of high-zinc rice among female farmers with young children in Bangladesh. The authors first conducted a randomized controlled trial by providing female farmers with micronutrient training in randomly selected villages in...

Knowledge spillovers among firms are widely viewed as a key driver of agglomeration and growth, but are difficult to estimate cleanly. We randomly allocated an energy-efficient motor - a "servo'" motor - among leather-goods firms in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and tracked adoption, information flows,...