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The aim of this study is to examine arguments about the economic and ethical worth of microfinance.

This study draws on the available literature to provide a balanced discussion of different views about the economic and ethical desirability of microfinancing. The discussion is reinforced by the use of secondary data (statistics) on the attributes of microfinancing and by reference to a case study in rural Pakistan.

Microfinancing is less virtuous than commonly portrayed. Its economic inefficiency consequences are identified, and it is found only likely to make a small contribution to economic growth. The economic efficiency criterion for moral worth (promoted by Becker and Posner) is found to be wanting. From an ethical point of view, microfinance needs to be supplemented by charity to assist the poor. The supply of Islamic microfinance has grown rapidly, but it remains absolutely quite small. It still has some way to go to overcome the ethical and economic shortcomings associated with the supply of microfinance. Supplying microfinance to vulnerable female borrowers can put them under considerable psychological stress. Possible beneficial effects of microfinance are also identified.

This study is unique because it systematically draws on recent literature and data to provide a novel and balanced review of the economic and ethical worth of microfinance.

Possible reasons for using kites to kill gazelles are comprehensively reviewed in this article. Even though they are now well inventoried and documented, desert kites are still not well understood, as exemplified by the recurrent controversies about their function and dating. According to the dominant view, kites were hunting structures used to drive and to mass kill large herds of wild ungulates, particularly gazelles. Although kites were intensively used during the Early Bronze Age, some of them could have been built and used before that. Beyond these issues, the cultural and socioeconomic aspects of the kites phenomenon are even less understood, and therefore, we focus on changing reasons for the long-lasting use of kites as hunting devices. We contend that the reasons why they were used during the period of utilization for hunting gazelles changed, in most cases, in response to socioeconomic development. It is hypothesized, for example, that, as a result of urban development, kites may have been increasingly (but not exclusively) used to kill gazelles to trade their products with urban communities and farmers, even though they had other uses as well which are also considered. The main hypothesis presented in this article enables diverse opinions about the types of uses and reasons for utilizing desert kites to be reconciled, including in particular varied reasons given in the literature about why they were used for killing gazelles.

To provide and assess trends on the status of women in Bangladesh in terms of key macro level indicators namely, women's labour force participation, educational attainments and earnings vis‐à‐vis men.

The trends in women's workforce participation, educational attainments and earnings compared with those of men are evaluated on the basis of descriptive statistics. Correlation and regression techniques are used to examine the relationship between women's education and workforce participation, and to predict the equalisation of female‐male educational attainment.

The study finds evidence of growing commercialisation of women's work in Bangladesh. Although most women in the workforce are self‐employed or employed in low‐skill jobs, their participation in high skill and entrepreneurial jobs as well as policy‐making bodies is on the rise. While gender wage differentials have been considerably reduced in many industries, in general, women tend to be paid less than men. There have been remarkable improvements in women's educational attainments. Further, female education is found to be positively correlated with their workforce participation. Overall, the findings indicate an improvement in women's status in Bangladesh.

The suggested relationship between women's education and employment needs to be further investigated using rigorous econometric techniques in order to distinguish between productivity‐enhancing effects of education and other determinants of increased female employment (FEMPL).

The research should be a useful reference to international and domestic policy‐makers as well as members of the academia and future researchers on the issue.

This study represents the first of its kind in the Bangladesh context. It provides valuable information about, and an independent assessment of, women's status in Bangladesh at the national level.

This paper outlines economic threshold models developed by various authors as an aid to decision-making about pest management and their applicability to pests of livestock. The definitional confusions relating to economic threshold models are raised as are limitations for applying threshold models. Complexities in the nature of yield loss function due to uncertainty in pest densities, the presence of multiple pests, and the occurrence of pesticide resistance are discussed. An extension is provided that incorporates both multiple-pest species and pest resistance to control measures. Complications relating to the cost functions for pest control are considered. The combination of these factors limits the applicability of profit-maximising thresholds for livestock management, especially compared to other strategies such as prophylaxis.

Tropical deforestation continues at a very alarming rate. Certain forms of deforestation are economically desirable, but economic criteria alone are not sufficient for deciding whether a deforestation project is desirable. Previous studies on deforestation mechanisms are grouped into four general categories, i.e. Neo‐Malthusian, government‐failure, microeconomic and macroeconomic approaches. The Neo‐Malthusian approach sees population pressure as the underlying cause of tropical deforestation. The government‐failure approach looks at misdirected policies that result in unintended deforestation and government’s inability to preclude preventable deforestation. The microeconomic approach examines how, under various forms of market failure, an agent’s economic behaviours can lead to deforestation. The macroeconomic approach explores the possible links between debt and deforestation. We also present micro‐level evidence of a case where deforestation can be associated with farmers’ capital accumulation behaviour, and poverty is a deterrent to, not a cause of, deforestation.

Outlines the international travels of Clement Allan Tisdell in the period 1965‐1996 and an Australian journey made to Adelaide in 1962 for academic reasons and indicates the influence of these journeys on his publications, outlook and intellectual evolution. Emphasises how varied the life of an economist can be and the importance of international social contacts for academic development. Because of the extent of his travels, descriptions and analysis of most of his journeys are brief. Consequently, a longer story still remains untold.

Clem Tisdell is one of Australia’s pre‐eminent economists who has made decisive contributions in several areas of economics, perhaps most notably development economics, environmental economics and natural resource economics. Tisdell is presently Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and is also a long‐standing member of the editorial advisory board of the International Journal of Social Economics. This interview, which falls in the tradition of Klamer, was recorded in his Brisbane home in November 1995 and seeks to explore Tisdell’s extraordinary career, the development of his thinking about economics in general and his prodigious research output in particular. Tisdell answered the questions in his customary quietly‐spoken and good‐humoured manner.

Begins by considering whether the economic theory of the supply, nature and demand for biographies developed by James M. Buchanan and Robert Tollison might apply to this autobiography. Outlines Tisdell’s experiences in his pre‐school years (1939‐1945), at school (1946‐1956) and as a university student (1957‐1963). Covers the period of his first appointment as a temporary lecturer at the Australian National University (1964) and of his postdoctoral travelling scholarship (1965) which took him to Princeton and Stanford and the period of his employment from 1966 onwards. His family and its history are given particular attention.