Books by Mohammad Ashraf

This book clarifies some misunderstandings about money by tying the concept of money to the goods and services sector of the economy. After providing a brief history of money, the author details the role of money in the division of labor and specialization, in economic growth, and in an interconnected world.

The main objectives of this book are three-fold. Firstly, we surveyed the participants in the GB, BRAC and ASA in order to see the income status of the rural in Bangladesh which shows that income of the participants of these MFIs have not been increased. So the outcomes of the studies which showed earlier that the income of the participants of the MFIs had been increased that helped the rural poor to break the poverty circle in Bangladesh are evidently misleading. This study also makes a humble attempt to identify the factors that are prohibiting the rural poor in becoming the participants in the MFIs in Bangladesh. The result shows that there have been at least seven reasons and two of them are religious factors which are responsible for discouraging the rural poor to become the participants in the MFIs. This fact implies that we need an alternative way which can involve those rural poor who remain outside microfinance scheme can try to improve their own economic condition by self-employment in the micro-enterprises operated by themselves. In this respect, we explored the potentialities of three Islamic MFIs (IMFIs) operated in Bangladesh and recommended a paradigm shift.

This is about to detect the effects of government interventions on inflation control. This study applies the method of long memory instead of traditional method.The data generating process considers the case where there are shock-plans i.e. inliers such as government interventions that are short-lived but important in magnitude. The essence of the overall results of the simulation implies that the level to which inflation falls after the application of a government programs has no impact on the estimates of the fractional parameter and on the persistence of the inflation process. That means any abrupt government interventions have temporary rather than permanent effects on lowering the inflation rates and the series remain stationary. Thus, the stochastic behavior of the inflation rate is indeed unstable. Therefore, any government intervention is merely a temporary measure to control the high inflation, which implies the facts of pursuing alternative measures of monetary policy. This paper recommends, however, pursuing the Time-Consistency Economic policy, which provides an explanation in order to combat inflation and to sustain the result for the longer period of time.

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.