Dr. Minhaj Mahmud, the Head of Research of BIGD presented a paper titled ‘Infrastructure and Well-being: Employment Effects of Jamuna Bridge in Bangladesh’ at the Workshop on Poor Economics in Tokyo: Frontiers of Development Economics on August 3rd, 2015 at the Economic Research Building, University of Tokyo, Japan. The paper was prepared jointly by Dr. Minhaj Mahmud and Yasuyuki Sawada, Professor of Economics, University of Tokyo. The ultimate goal of the workshop was to improve the research capacity of participants, thereby contributing to pushing forward the frontier of development studies in Japan. Another aim was to contribute to expanding the domestic and international network of researchers in this field.
The paper evaluates the impact of the Jamuna multipurpose bridge, the largest physical infrastructure in Bangladesh, on employment opportunities. The authors particularly focused on labour market integration effects using survey data that provides information on current and retrospective assessments of household situation in two adjacent districts connected by the bridge. Using a quasi-experimental framework of the canonical difference-in-difference regression methodology, they analysed the impact of this infrastructure on employment and job transition patterns. The research found that, along with decreasing household unemployment, the bridge construction facilitated farm to non-farm shift of employments. Also the treatment effects are heterogeneous across age, gender and education level.