Abstract: Many countries around the world have faced currency crisis where they experienced substantial devaluation of local currency vis-à-vis some strong international currency within a short span of time resulting disruption in nominal as well as real activities. Although Bangladesh is not one of them yet in an integrated world possibility of experiencing such crisis is not remote. Using the concept of Exchange Market Pressure (EMP) in this paper we have tried to measure pressure on exchange rate in Bangladesh and then tried to find an early warning indicator of building EMP for Bangladesh. We found that in some occasions exchange rate situations got little erratic but never to the extent of crisis. We also found that before building up exchange rate pressure current account is most probably to show an early warning for Bangladesh. And ratio of M2 and reserve actually moves along with EMP index, so it may not be too informative for identifying currency crisis beforehand.

Abstract: The Philippines’ food processing sector is the most dominant manufacturing sector in the country. This study aims to understand and evaluate the different factors which affects the pork meat processing of Calixtra’s Food Products, and to incorporate the determined factors in creating an industry perspective of the pork meat processing industrythat would serve as a guide to those who wants to venture in this type of business. Based on the results of the study, the researchers observed that the main problems faced by the industry are the seasonality, advertising, and storage of the products. For small-scale processors, advertising is not that important. They mainly rely on the creation ofpatrons and established consumers. The researchers recommended that the processors should be located near the city with diversified products to cope with the very high competition in the market.

Abstract: Subprime mortgage default rates have led to a crisis in the residential mortgage markets unprecedented since the Great Depression. Information reported on these defaults has demonstrated that they vary by location and region. To properly understand the causes of such high rates of mortgage defaults, we undertook this study. It reports on a cross-section analysis of default rates of residential, subprime and Alt-A mortgages aggregated to the metropolitan areas (MSA) level. The hypotheses tested here represent the effects of loan and borrower level characteristics and MSA economic factors, such as MSA employment growth, unemployment rate, household income and housing price changes and their volatility on the level of default rates on subprime mortgages. We test these by origination vintage for 2005 and 2006 and project default rates by MSA into 2007 using 2006 vintage estimated parameters. We find that loan and borrower level characteristics such as loan-to-value ratio weighted by original loan balances, the weighted proportion of loans that have no documentation or the borrowers’ weighted FICO score and MSA economic factors of housing price changes and employment growth are highly statistically significant and economically important in explaining MSA subpirme residential mortgage default rates over the 359 MSAs for 2005 and 2006 vintages. The data used are from Loan Performance data base for 6 million subprime loans separated into 2005 and 2006 vintages, the OFHEO (now FHFA) Housing Price Index and household employment Dept. of Labor. Projections of housing price changes and employment growth for each MSA were used based on a linear extrapolation of the past 9 months of 2006 and the first 3 months of 2007. The main finding is that the projected default rates for all of 2007 are larger than those of 2005 and 2006 on average.

Abstract: The study, evaluation of the approaches used by graduates in job search in Ghana, employed an exploratory design approach by surveying both employed and unemployed graduates using a questionnaire. A total of 132 employed graduates and 128 unemployed graduates were reached for the study.The findings of the study revealed that both the employed and unemployed graduates consider use of application letters, personal contacts, references and networking to be an effective means in gaining job employment. Majority of the respondents indicated that, the response rate of companies to the use of the above mentioned methods of job search was very high and encouraging. Majority of the respondents indicated that they received responses from about five companies offering them a chance of dialogue about the possibility of handing them employment. Most of the employed graduates expressed their desire to recommend it and also to re-use them should the need to change job arise. The extent of their belief in the use of these methods of job search is that using them in job search can guarantee a favourable outcome of finding a job within one year.The study recommends among others that organisations should ease the requirements used as criteria for qualification for employment so that more graduates can be offered work. Also, it is suggested that graduates should be more confident and persistent in their job search, exploring more other job search options to secure themselves work. In addition, the researchers advise that HR experts and managers should build their recruitment and selection strategies around advert and the use of websites and social media.

Abstract: Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) is an important safety net among the poverty reduction strategies. Although, cash transfer of PKR1000 per month cannot change the whole social status of the people in this era of rising inflation and frequently increasing oil prices, yet it provides some relief for daily household expenditures (especially food, education and health expenditures) for the poorest of the poor families. Primary data of 156 households (3.44 % of the beneficiaries’ households, which is equivalent to 0.58 % of the total population of the Tehsil), was collected from all the 7 union councils of Tehsil Mankera, District Bhakkar through proportionate sampling. The data was analyzed through SPSS for frequency distribution and Chow’s test was applied to check the structural stability in the social status of the beneficiaries before and after the program. The results showed that there was a structural stability in the life of the BISP beneficiaries after the program was started and their expenditure and thus consumption patterns had also increased. This improvement in consumption pattern means progress in the welfare of the beneficiary population which shows there is a trend towards reducing poverty.