A number of studies have estimated the income elasticity of health care expenditure to identify whether health care is a necessary or luxury product. However, the issue has received less attention in developing countries, especially in Asian economies. The current study for the first time has used the panel data covering 36 Asian countries for the period 1995–2013 for revealing the nature of health care as a product. Along with conventional econometric techniques we have addressed the issue of cross section dependence and used Westerlund (2007) panel cointegration test which is robust against cross section dependence and heterogeneity for detecting the presence of panel cointegration. By applying Fully Modified OLS (FMOLS) and Dynamic OLS (DOLS) it was found that the long run elasticity of Health Care Expenditure (HCE) with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is less than unit implying that the health care can be regarded as necessary in nature for these countries.

Background: Modeling exchange rate volatility has remained crucially important because of its diverse implications. This study aimed to address the issue of error distribution assumption in modeling and forecasting exchange rate volatility between the Bangladeshi taka (BDT) and the US dollar ($). Methods: Using daily exchange rates for 7 years (January 1, 2008, to April 30, 2015, this study attempted to model dynamics following generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic (GARCH), asymmetric power ARCH (APARCH), exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedstic (EGARCH), threshold generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedstic (TGARCH), and integrated generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedstic (IGARCH) processes under both normal and Student's t-distribution assumptions for errors. Results and Conclusions: It was found that, in contrast with the normal distribution, the application of Student's t-distribution for errors helped the models satisfy the diagnostic tests and show improved forecasting accuracy. With such error distribution for out-of-sample volatility forecasting, AR(2)-GARCH(1, 1) is considered the best.

The impact of fiscal deficit measured by deficit in national budget on the growth of respective economy has been a widely researched area with plenty of debatable results. Shedding light in search of the optimum level of budget deficit, the current paper tried to contribute to the field of literature on this issue which is perhaps inadequate as far as Bangladesh economy is concerned. A total of 40 years of time series data spanning form 1975-76 to 2014-15 has been employed. Identification of integration order of the variables was examined performing Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF), Phillips-Perron (PP) and Kwiatkowski-Phillips-Schmidt-Shin (KPSS) tests. Establishing the existence of cointegration among variables following the Johansen's procedure, long run cointegrating vector has been estimated depending on VECM. The threshold has been identified solving the estimated long run cointegrating relationship for a local maximum. Findings can be summarized by saying that the long run impact of budget deficit on growth would remain positive; nevertheless, there would be no short run adjustment. Depending on the model definition and the particular exogenous variable(s), the threshold budget deficit has been measured to range between 4.55 to 5.0 percent of GDP.

Pulp property of a lignocellulosic material depends upon its morphological characteristics and chemical constituents it. Shabuj Pat (CVL-1) variety from Corchorus capsularis and BJRI Tossa Pat 4 (O-72) and BJRI Tossa Pat 5 (O-795) varieties from Corchorus olitorius of jute are mostly grown in Bangladesh. This study deals on morphological and chemical properties of these three varieties of jute stick to assess their suitability for pulp production. The results were significantly differed among the varieties and within the variety. The a-cellulose content was almost the same in the variety of CVL-1 and O-795. In the same variety, the middle portion contained the largest amount of alpha-cellulose and the top portion contained the lowest. Klason lignin content varied from 24.2 to 26.8%. Fibre length was significantly same for all the three jute sticks but the width and slenderness ratios were different. Pulp yield in soda anthraquinone process was nearly the same in all these varieties around 44% at kappa number 15.

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