Despite obtaining almost 98 per cent duty-free market access in China, Bangladesh cannot take the opportunities properly yet due to lack of aggressive export promoting activities, building a solid B2B linkage, establishing a local presence, and participating in online sales, speaker said  on Wednesday. They suggested focusing on product quality and diversification, and signing a trade agreement to boost Chinese investment-backed export expansion. The observations came from the seminar on ‘Making the Most of Market Access in China: What Needs to be Done?’ jointly organized by Bangladesh China Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCCI) and Research and Policy Integration for Development (RAPID) in the city on Wednesday. Ambassador of China to Bangladesh Li Jiming hoped that Bangladesh would be member of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) soon which will help Bangladesh to promote export and welfare by trade and investment facilitation. “The relationship between Bangladesh and China is well in trade and investment. However, Chinese commercial bank can be set up in Bangladesh for the sake of financial cooperation more. There are a lot of projects under taking by Chinese companies in Bangladesh. Many mega projects will also complete soon,” he added. Jiming also said Bangladesh has a brighter future. There is a meaningful industrialisation. “China government provides Bangladesh zero tariff export facilities. It’s a very crucial. We are working G2G as well.” Read: Chinese investors can maximise profits by setting up industries in Bangladesh: Envoy Commerce minister Tipu Munshi said, “Our apparels are exported more to the USA and European countries but the volume is lower in Chinese market. We have to work and make proper strategy to take the opportunities.” He said Bangladesh is going to graduate LDC by 2026 and now they need a comprehensive action plan. “Besides, the gabs in different sectors should be addressed soon. And, more and more fairs and branding of our products are also requirement,” he added. Presenting key-note paper, RAPID chairman Dr. Mohammad Abdur Razzaque said despite obtaining zero-tariff market access facility to most products, Bangladesh’s exports to China remain rather modest. Since 2021, China has provided Bangladesh duty-free market access in almost 98 per cent of tariff lines. Prior to that, Bangladesh used to get similar market access in 61 per cent of Chinese tariff lines. “Bangladesh exported to China $680 million in 2021 FY while Bangladesh imports around $13 billion from China each year. Bangladesh’s potential exports to China should be at least $3 billion,” the economist said. He said China imports products from different countries every year worth around $2.7 trillion dollars. So, it has huge market. “Bangladesh’s duty-free benefits will end with LDC graduation. Bangladesh should negotiate a trade agreement with China. As part of the agreement, China can consider Bangladesh as a regional manufacturing hub to supply to other markets,” the economist also said. Read: 5,161 more Bangladeshi products to enjoy zero tariff benefits to Chinese market from July 1 He added that Chinese consumers are focusing more on high-quality products. Bangladesh should develop a long-term strategy for export promotion to Chinese as China will soon emerge as the world largest retail market. RAPID executive director and also Dhaka University professor Dr M Abu Eusuf moderated the function and with BCCCI president Gazi Golam Murtoza in chair. BCCCI Acting Secretary General Al Mamun Mridha said the trade gap between the two countries should be reduced. “Bangladesh can take the opportunities through product value addition and sipping cost should be reduced to facilitate trade.” He also urged China investors to invest more in Bangladesh’s potential sectors like e-commerce and agriculture. Vice Chairman of Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) AHM Ahsan said they scrutinise how to increase Bangladesh’s export volume. “Our main exportable item is RMG. Our export growth is low in Chinese market despite obtaining more tariff facilities there. We have to work as per the demand of Chinese market,” he added.

A U.S.-based economist won the Nobel prize in economics Monday for pioneering research that transformed widely held ideas about the labor force, showing how an increase in the minimum wage doesn’t hinder hiring and immigrants don't lower pay for native-born workers. Two others shared the award for developing ways to study these types of societal issues. Canadian-born David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, was awarded half of the prize for his research on how the minimum wage, immigration and education affect the labor market. The other half was shared by Joshua Angrist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dutch-born Guido Imbens of Stanford University for their framework for studying issues that can't rely on traditional scientific methods. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the three “completely reshaped empirical work in the economic sciences.” Together, they helped rapidly expand the use of “natural experiments,” or studies based on observing real-world data. Such research made economics more applicable to everyday life, provided policymakers with actual evidence on the outcomes of policies, and in time spawned a more popular approach to economics epitomized by the blockbuster bestseller “Freakonomics,” by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt. Read: Russian Nobel winner: Peace Prize is for my paper, not me In a study published in 1993, Card looked at what happened to jobs at Burger King, KFC, Wendy's and Roy Rogers when New Jersey raised its minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.05, using restaurants in bordering eastern Pennsylvania as the control — or comparison — group. Contrary to previous studies, he and his late research partner Alan Krueger found that an increase in the minimum wage had no effect on the number of employees. Card and Krueger's research fundamentally altered economists’ views of such policies. As noted by the Economist magazine, in 1992 a survey of the American Economic Association’s members found that 79% agreed that a minimum wage law increased unemployment among younger and lower-skilled workers. Those views were largely based on traditional economic notions of supply and demand: If you raise the price of something, you get less of it. By 2000, however, just 46% of the AEA’s members said minimum wage laws increase unemployment, largely because of Card and Krueger. Their findings sparked interest in further research into why a higher minimum wouldn’t reduce employment. One conclusion was that companies are able to pass on the cost of higher wages to customers by raising prices. In other cases, if a company is a major employer in a particular area, it may be able to keep wages particularly low, so that it could afford to pay a higher minimum, when required to do so, without cutting jobs. The higher pay would also attract more applicants, boosting labor supply. Their paper "has shaken up the field at a very fundamental level,” said Arindrajit Dube, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “And so for that reason, and all the following research that their work ignited, this is a richly deserved award.” Krueger would almost certainly have shared in the award, Dube said, but the economics Nobel isn't given posthumously. Krueger, Imbens said, co-authored papers with all three winners. Krueger, who died in 2019 at age 58, taught at Princeton for three decades and was chief Labor Department economist under President Bill Clinton. He also was Obama’s chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Card and Krueger's paper made a huge impact on other economists. Lisa Cook, an economics professor at Michigan State University, said their paper was “a revelation” that helped crystallize her thinking for her research on racial violence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and how it inhibited patent filings by Black Americans. Card's research also found that an influx of immigrants into a city doesn't cost native workers jobs or lower their earnings, though earlier immigrants can be negatively affected. Read: Tanzanian Abdulrazak Gurnah awarded Nobel literature prize Card studied the labor market in Miami in the wake of Cuba’s sudden decision to let people emigrate in 1980, leading 125,000 people to leave in what became known as the Mariel Boatlift. It resulted in a 7% increase in the city’s workforce. By comparing the evolution of wages and employment in four other cities, Card discovered no negative effects for Miami residents with low levels of education. Follow-up work showed that increased immigration can have a positive impact on income for people born in the country. Angrist and Imbens won their half of the award for working out the methodological issues that allow economists to draw solid conclusions about cause and effect even where they cannot carry out studies according to strict scientific methods. Card's work on the minimum wage is one of the best-known natural experiments in economics. The problem with such experiments is that it can be difficult to isolate cause and effect. For example, if you want to figure out whether an extra year of education will increase a person’s income, you cannot simply compare the incomes of adults with one more year of schooling to those without. That's because there are many other factors that might determine whether those who got an extra year of schooling are able to make more money. Perhaps they are harder workers or more diligent and would have done better than those without the extra year even if they did not stay in school. These kinds of issues cause economists and other social science researchers to say “correlation doesn’t prove causation.” Imbens and Angrist, however, figured out how to isolate the effects of things like an extra year of school. Their methods enabled researchers to draw clearer conclusions about cause and effect, even if they are unable to control who gets things like extra education, the way scientists in a lab can control their experiments. Imbens, in one paper, used a survey of lottery winners to evaluate the impact of a government-provided basic income, which has been proposed by left-leaning politicians in the U.S. and Europe. He found that a prize of $15,000 a year did not have much effect on a person's likelihood to work. Card said he thought the voice message that came in at 2 a.m. from someone from Sweden was a prank until he saw the number on his phone really was from Sweden. He said he and his co-author Kreuger faced disbelief from other economists about their findings. “At the time, the conclusions were somewhat controversial. Quite a few economists were skeptical of our results,” he said. Imbens' wife, Susan Athey, is also an economist and president-elect of the AEA, and Imbens said they sometimes argue about economics in front of their three children. “This means, I hope, they'll learn that they need to listen to me a little bit more,” he said. ”I'm afraid it probably won't work out that way." At home in Brookline, Massachusetts, Angrist said: “I can hardly believe it. It's only been a few hours and I am still trying to absorb it." Read:Physics Nobel rewards work on climate change, other forces He also missed the call from Nobel officials and awoke to a torrent of texts from friends. Fortunately, he said, he knew enough other Nobel Laureates that he got a callback number from them. As a youth, Angrist dropped out of a master's program in economics at Hebrew University in Israel, although he did meet his future wife, Mira, there. He has dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship. “I did have sort of a winding road,” he said. “I wasn't a precocious high school student.” The award comes with a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (over $1.14 million). Unlike the other Nobel prizes, the economics award wasn’t established in the will of Alfred Nobel but by the Swedish central bank in his memory in 1968, with the first winner selected a year later. It is the last prize announced each year.

Three U.S-based economists won the 2021 Nobel prize for economics on Monday for work on drawing conclusions from unintended experiments, or so-called “natural experiments.” David Card of the University of California at Berkeley was awarded one half of the prize, while the other half was shared by Joshua Angrist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Guido Imbens from Stanford University. Read: Journalists from Philippines, Russia get Nobel Peace Prize The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the three have “completely reshaped empirical work in the economic sciences.” “Card’s studies of core questions for society and Angrist and Imbens’ methodological contributions have shown that natural experiments are a rich source of knowlege,” said Peter Fredriksson, chair of the Economic Sciences Committee. “Their research has substantially improved our ability to answer key causal questions, which has been of great benefit for society.” Unlike the other Nobel prizes, the economics award wasn’t established in the will of Alfred Nobel but by the Swedish central bank in his memory in 1968, with the first winner selected a year later. It is the last prize announced each year. Read:Tanzanian Abdulrazak Gurnah awarded Nobel literature prize Last week, the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to journalists Maria Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia for their fight for freedom of expression in countries where reporters have faced persistent attacks, harassment and even murder. Ressa was the only woman honored this year in any category. The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to U.K.-based Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, who was recognized for his “uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee.” The prize for physiology or medicine went to Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries into how the human body perceives temperature and touch. Read: Nobel in chemistry honors 'greener' way to build molecules Three scientists won the physics prize for work that found order in seeming disorder, helping to explain and predict complex forces of nature, including expanding our understanding of climate change. Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan won the chemistry prize for finding an easier and environmentally cleaner way to build molecules that can be used to make compounds, including medicines and pesticides.

The world is facing an unprecedented crisis with the Covid-19 pandemic. Day after day all the failures in our economic and social system and thinking process are being revealed.