Bangladesh Economics Review is an independent publication about how this country's economy actually works. I started it because I kept looking for serious analysis of Bangladesh and couldn't find enough of it.
Independent
No institution. No agenda.
I'm not affiliated with any university, think tank, or political group. Nobody tells me what to cover or how to frame it. Every piece is based on my own reading. I try to be upfront when my reasoning might be wrong.
Research-driven
Show your work.
I cite sources, link to data, and try to be clear about where the evidence ends and my interpretation begins. Those aren't always the same thing, and pretending they are is how bad economic writing happens.
Bangladesh-first
Local questions, global frameworks.
Most serious economic writing treats Bangladesh as a footnote. There's a lot worth saying about how standard theory applies here, and where it doesn't. That's what this is for.
I'm seventeen, I'm in 10th grade, and I live in Bangladesh. Most of what I do is systems programming. I've contributed to rustc, rust-analyzer, Rust for Linux, and the Zed editor. Over the past year I also picked up a serious reading habit in economics, and that eventually turned into this.
For the past year or so I've been spending most of my reading time in economics: Duflo, Rodrik, a lot of IMF working papers, whatever I could find on Bangladesh's development. The picture that kept coming up was that serious writing about this country's economy mostly doesn't exist outside of academic journals. It's either too technical to read or too thin to trust. That bothered me.
So I started writing about it myself. I'm not an economist and I'm not pretending to be one. What I try to do is read carefully, cite clearly, and write in a way where you can actually see my reasoning and push back on it. Bangladesh gets serious coverage of its garment sector and its poverty numbers. The rest of the economic story is mostly left alone. That's what this is for.
Economics is a big tent. Here's where I spend most of my time.
Inflation, exchange rates, monetary policy, fiscal deficits. The forces that determine whether the economy is running hot or cold and how Bangladesh's policymakers respond to them.
The garment sector earns around 80% of Bangladesh's export income and employs four million people. That's a story in itself. So is what comes after it: trade policy, industrial strategy, what diversification actually means here.
How did Bangladesh grow this fast, and what's left to do? Questions about poverty, education, infrastructure, and whether the growth of the past few decades can actually sustain itself.
Remittances, the banking sector's nonperforming loan problem, mobile financial services, and whether Bangladesh's financial system is doing what it's supposed to.
Why do sensible-sounding policies fail? Why do bad ones stick around? Usually the answer has more to do with incentives and institutions than with economics alone.
Dollar strength, commodity shocks, China's shifting trade posture. None of it stays abroad. This is where I look at how global forces actually land in Bangladesh.
Because I'm not doing this for revenue. I'm writing about questions I find genuinely interesting that aren't being written about well. A paywall would just get in the way of that.
If the writing is useful to you, share it with whoever might also find it useful. Or email me and tell me where I got something wrong. That's honestly more useful to me.
Who writes for BER?
Just me, Albab Hasan. I do the research, writing, and publishing. No team.
How often do you publish?
No fixed schedule. I publish when I have something worth saying, which usually works out to once or twice a month. Sometimes less. I'd rather write less and say more than hit a quota.
Are you a professional economist?
No. I'm seventeen and self-taught through books, papers, and whatever economic data I can get my hands on. I try to show my reasoning clearly enough that you can actually disagree with it rather than just take my word for it.
Can I republish or share your work?
Share freely, with attribution. Anything beyond that, email me first.
How do I suggest a topic?
albab@bangladesheconomicsreview.com. I read everything.
Suggestions, corrections, an argument about something I got wrong. I read every email. Most of what I end up covering started as something someone pointed out.
albab@bangladesheconomicsreview.com