Abstract

Background: Biomass fuel is the main source of rural household energy in many developing countries in South and Southeast Asia. This paper examines the preference and attitude towards biomass fuels of consumers living in rural areas of Bangladesh. Methods: A questionnaire survey was conducted to collect data of 240 households from four upazilas located in four distinct agro-ecological zones of Bangladesh. Different inferential statistical tests were carried out to analyze the information.

This is the peer reviewed version of an article which has been published in final form at http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8489.12114. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving at http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-820227.html#terms 2

This study aims to investigate dynamic relationships between research and development (R&D) expenditure, climate change (measured by annual rainfall and temperature variations), human capital (proxied by literacy) and total factor productivity (TFP) growth in Bangladesh agriculture. Pesaran's Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator is used to a unique panel data of 17 regions of Bangladesh covering a 61-year period . In addition, the panel vector autoregression (PVAR) model is also applied to trace the responsiveness of TFP from a shock to R&D, extension services, and literacy rate. Results reveal that R&D has an insignificant impact on TFP in the short-run, while it has a significant positive impact in the long-run. The contributions of climate variables (i.e., rainfall and temperature variations) are highly significant and negative in the long run. The literacy rate is found to have a significant positive impact on TFP as expected. These results suggest that agricultural R&D investment and human capital could play an important role to ameliorate the adverse effects of climate change in the agricultural sector of Bangladesh.

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