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It is evident that the local small and medium enterprises of Bangladesh suffered in the competition because of the strong presence of foreign brands in the market. The purpose of this study is to figure out the factors influencing consumers to purchase a foreign brand predominantly among young consumers.

It is a quantitative study considering 257 young demographics as respondents. They are drawn randomly. Confirmatory factor analysis, regression analysis and a path model of structural equation model using AMOS graphics software are used in this study to analyze the data.

This study finds two out of three identified variables are influencing the foreign product purchase for the young Bangladeshi consumers. Brand value and product features of the given foreign product are the most dominant factors behind this adoption. However, a significant relationship between product quality and brand choice is not evident in this study.

It will give a clue to the small or medium startup of the country that normally target the young customer but face challenges to understand their mind and sometimes lagging because of the strong presence of the international brands.

A comprehensive review of the literature suggests that not so many studies took place that determines the respective factors behind the purchase of foreign brands particularly among young demographics of a lower middle income developing nation.

Policy framework has significant roles in minimizing the impact of climate change in agrarian societies like Ethiopia. The purpose of this paper is to assess the integration of issues related to climate change adaptation into the national development planning of Ethiopia.

A qualitative research design, which depended on secondary and primary data sources, was used in this study. Data were collected from relevant documents. These were substantiated with field data gathered through key informant interviews and focus group discussions from participants identified using purposive sampling. Thematic analysis of the collected data was done by first considering the relevant documents and then comparing with the field data. During the analysis and interpretation, the results were combined to explain, confirm, refute and/or enrich the data obtained through document reviews and interviews.

The result of the study revealed that the general issues of environmental management have been included in the relevant documents (national plans). However, the documents do not explicitly identify climate change adaptation strategies and options that can alleviate the current impacts and the projected negative impacts associated with climate change. In fact, some documents were found to be characterized by numerous gaps. For example, the environmental policy of Ethiopia does not address climate trading, climate resilient green economy and recent development. The result from interviews shows that the constitution of the country lacks sufficiently addressing climate change adaptation. The result obtained from focus group discussion with informants indicated that the environmental policy of the country is shallow and suffers from showing clear direction regarding integration. The informants indicate that though there is an office that works on climate change at zonal level, there is no well-defined structure for climate change at zonal, district and Kebele levels and there appears to be weak integration among the different institutions working on climate change.

This study would speed up the revision of environmental policy of Ethiopia and the development of a separate policy document that focuses on adaptation to climate change.

This paper aims to explore the impacts and challenges of the Southern African Development Community’s industrialization agenda on the industrialization of two Sub-Saharan African states, Botswana and Tanzania.

The study adopts the documentary research method by carefully analyzing relevant policy documents, conference papers, reports, and journals.

While there is an impact on policy provisions targeted towards industrialization, there are challenges such as poor policy implementation that, if not addressed, could dampen efforts by policymakers in achieving the goal of industrializing the countries.

Governments should ensure equal synergy relations amongst institutions tasked with implementation. Increase investment in research and development (R&D) and human capital as drivers of innovation are needed for industrialization.

This paper adds to the discourse on industrialization. It also highlights challenges faced by countries whose policies have had minimal impact on industrialization.

The factors that determine foreign direct investment (FDI) are important to policy-makers, investors, the banking industry and the public at large. FDI in Ghana has received increased attention in recent times because its relevance in the Ghanaian economy is too critical to gloss over. The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of FDI in Ghana between the period of 1990 and 2015.

The study employed a causal research design. The study used the Johansen’s approach to cointegration within the framework of vector autoregressive for the data analysis.

The study found a cointegrating relationship between FDI and its determinants. The study found that both the long-run and short-run results found statistically significant negative effects of inflation rate, exchange rate and interest rate on FDI in Ghana while gross domestic product, electricity production and telephone usage (TU) had a positive effect on FDI.

The study found a cointegrating relationship between FDI and its determinants. The study found that both the long-run and short-run results found statistically significant negative effects of inflation rate, exchange rate and interest rate on FDI in Ghana whiles gross domestic product, electricity production and TU had a positive effect on FDI.

This study has potential implication for boosting the economies of developing countries through its policy recommendations which if implemented can guarantee more capital inflows for the economies.

This study has given more effective ways of attracting more FDI into countries which in effect achieve higher GDP and also higher standard of living through mechanisms and in the end creating more social protection programs for the people.

Although studies have been conducted to explore the determinants of FDI, some of the core macroeconomic variables such as inflation, interest rate, telephone subscriptions, electricity production, etc., which are unstable and have longstanding effects on FDI have not been much explored to a give a clear picture of the relationships. Therefore, a study that will explore these and other macroeconomic variables to give clear picture of their relationships and suggest some of the possible ways of dealing with these variables in order to attract more FDI for the country to achieve its goal is what this paper seeks to do.

Despite the growing emphasis on revitalizing the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector in Bangladesh, very little discussion has taken place on reforming the current inflexible transition pathways, from TVET to the universities. This paper aims to reflect critically on the existing literature on TVET, in the global and national context, and the experiences of students and TVET experts, to develop a model of collaboration between the polytechnic institutes and the universities in Bangladesh.

This paper follows a qualitative strategy of enquiry, using a mix of critical reflection on literature on TVET and higher education and unstructured interviews with two TVET experts, four TVET students and four students from a public university. It draws on the theories of collaboration and uses exemplary cases to illustrate and support the line of reasoning.

This paper identifies that there is resource dependency between the polytechnic institutes and universities in Bangladesh, and their institutional environment necessitates them to form collaboration to ensure flexible transition pathway, from polytechnic institutes to universities; this paper proposes a model for such collaboration.

This paper offers a guideline for forming collaboration among the relevant stakeholders.

Collaboration between polytechnic institutes and universities in Bangladesh is likely to address the inequitable nature of TVET, by improving its social status and acceptance, as well as allowing higher income opportunity and greater mobility for the TVET graduates, coming especially from humble socio-economic backgrounds.

This paper contributes in the recent discussions on how collaboration among different stakeholders can contribute in achieving the sustainable development goals, with special emphasis on TVET.

In this study, the impact of access to electricity on poverty reduction for Botswana is examined using the annual data from 1990 to 2021. The study was motivated by the need to establish if access to electricity could be a panacea on poverty reduction in Botswana. Given that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals deadline is fast approaching, and Botswana being one of the signatories, is expected to end poverty in all its forms – Goal 1. Establishing the role that electrification plays in poverty alleviation, helps in refocusing Botswana’s poverty alleviation strategies on factors that have high impact on poverty. The main objective of this study, therefore, is to investigate the relationship between poverty alleviation and access to electricity in Botswana.

The study uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to investigate the nature of the relations. Two poverty proxies were used in this study namely, household consumption expenditure and life expectancy.

The study found access to electricity to reduce poverty in the long run and in the short run, regardless of the poverty measure used. Thus, access to electricity plays an important role in poverty alleviation and Botswana is recommended to continue with the rural and urban electrification initiatives.

The study explores the impact of access to electricity on poverty reduction in Botswana, a departure from the current studies that examined the same relationship using energy consumption in general. This is on the back of increasing dependence of economic activities on electricity as a major source of energy.

The extreme measures that have been taken by governments across the globe to minimize the spread of COVID-19 have had significant impacts on almost all the public sectors, especially on the economy and education. This study aims to address the approaches and prospective of online-based training and e-learning for employee learning and development during this COVID-19 crisis.

With an emphasis on the qualitative approach and considering the complex COVID-19 emergency, required data were collected from in-depth interviews to interpret the experiences of the respondents.

The findings suggested that the digital learning ecosystem offered flexibility of time, place and pace, which provided essential convenience during the COVID-19 crisis. From the human resource (HR) perspective, the e-learning culture has enabled the organizations to quickly adopt the new normal, secure sustainable continuity of organizational development and ensure decent work and growth within and across organizations. The adoption of e-learning and flexible working conditions following the setback has enabled the organizations to quickly cope up with the new normal, causing a significant paradigm shift in the organizational culture and corporate sector of Bangladesh.

The study will assist the HR of any organization to contemplate e-learning systems as effective alternative training methods. Also, the study will be suggestive to traverse new dimensions and skillsets for the pedagogues.

This study offers new evidential scenarios regarding the emergence of effective e-learning initiatives and online-based learning programs for developing the workforce to be efficient and productive even in distressful and inconvenient COVID-19 situations.

The European Union (EU) has notified its revised Generalized System of Preference (GSP) on 31 October, 2012 which will come into effect from 1 January, 2014. The EU is also in the process of, or contemplating, to sign Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with many developing countries. Recently, EU has officially announced initiation of FTA negotiations with USA. Such preferential tariff arrangements could lead to significant erosion of preferences enjoyed currently by the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). In this backdrop, the main objective of the present study is to investigate the economic impacts originating from preference erosion in the EU market which could potentially affect LDCs in general, Bangladesh in particular. In this context, a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) analysis has been developed by using the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model and database to explore the aggregate impact of the preferential erosion as well as sectoral implications for which different partial equilibrium analyses were used. The analysis evince that if the EU eliminates all tariffs for Pakistan, India and Vietnam, Bangladesh's real GDP could decrease by 0.27 percent whilst welfare loss could be to the tune of US$ 54 million. Total exports to the EU will be reduced by 0.18 percent; consequently, Bangladesh’s terms of trade and exports of textiles and clothing could be fall by about 1 percent. The product level disaggregated analysis using RCA and unit price of major items also indicate that a number of products including textiles and clothing will be confronted with formidable market access difficulties in the EU.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of some internal features that influence the efficiency of non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) in Bangladesh.

The study selected the top 15 Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE)-listed NBFIs according to purposive sampling. The study period was from 2016 to 2020. Secondary data were collected from annual reports. The cost-to-income ratio was a dependent variable that was used as a proxy of operational efficiency. The ordinary least square regression technique was applied to measure the impact of firm-specific factors on efficiency.

Results showed that number of employees, branch number, firm size and deposit ratio have a significant effect on efficiency at 5% level. The number of branches and employees showed a negative impact, whereas firm size and deposit ratio showed a positive effect on the firms' efficiency. The deposit ratio is negatively related because deposit interest expenses were more than offset by interest income generation through the conversion of deposits into loans.

The study has practical and policy implications on NBFIs' managers, employees, shareholders, depositors, clients, regulatory authorities and government as efficiency enhancement would bring financial soundness.

This study shed light on some firm-specific factors that can be changed to increase operational efficiency or reduce the cost-to-income ratio. The novelty of the study is that it identified some significant associations between firm-specific factors and the operational efficiency of NBFIs.

This paper aims to evaluate the technical efficiency of the health-care systems in 21 selected middle-income countries during the period (2000–2017) and determine the source of inefficiency whether it is transient (short run) or persistent (long run).

The study uses the stochastic frontier analysis technique through employing the generalized true random effects model which overcomes the drawbacks of the previously introduced stochastic frontier models and allows for the separation between unobserved heterogeneity, persistent inefficiency and transient inefficiency.

Persistent efficiency is lower than the transient efficiency; hence, there are more efficiency gains that can be made by the selected countries by adopting long-term policies that aim at reforming the structure of the health-care system in the less efficient countries such as South Africa and Russia. The most efficient countries are Vietnam, Mexico and China which adopted a social health insurance that covers almost the whole population with the aim of increasing access to health-care services. Also, decentralization in health-care has assisted in adopting health-care policies that are suitable for both the rural and urban areas based on their specific conditions and health-care needs. A key success in the implementation of the adopted long-term policies by those countries is the continuous monitoring and evaluation of their outcomes and comparing them with the predefined targets and conducting any necessary modifications to ensure their movement in the right path to achieve their goals.

Although several studies have evaluated the technical efficiency both across and within countries using non-parametric (data envelopment analysis) and parametric (stochastic frontier analysis) approaches, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to evaluate the technical efficiency of selected middle-income countries during the period (2000–2017) using the generalized true random effects stochastic frontier analysis model.