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The growing prevalence of mental health issues, particularly depression and suicidal thoughts, points to the need to develop automated tools capable of detecting such sentiments from online communication. This study addresses some critical challenges by introducing a novel sentiment analysis framework for Bangla text, aimed at classifying content into non-depressive, depressive, and suicidal categories. We propose a hybrid deep learning model leveraging the strengths of transformer-based architectures, designed to manage long textual sequences effectively, a critical aspect in the context of natural language processing. Our model integrates RoBERTa (Robustly Optimised BERT Pre-Training Approach) with a Self-Attention Network (SAN), creating a synergistic framework for nuanced sentiment detection in Bangla social media posts, comments, and articles. This method addresses the scarcity of Bangla specific datasets by utilising a dataset curated for the study. The results demonstrate the superiority of our model, achieving an accuracy of 82.58%, alongside precision, recall, and F1-scores of 82%. Subsequently, it emphasises the potential for the proposed model to support early identification of mental health concerns, thereby enabling timely interventions and contributing to mental health awareness and prevention efforts. In the future, deploying the model as a real-time chatbot or browser extension could scan Bangla social media for depressive, non-depressive, and suicidal content and alert professionals to the risk factors.

Recent evidence indicates that citizens exhibit low involvement in financial activities within formal financial institutions. Therefore, this study explores how Digital Financial Literacy (DFL) influences savings in formal financial institutions. Using data from the Global Findex Database 2021 and the Standard & Poor’s Global FinLit Survey 2014, covering 135 countries, the study applies multiple regression analysis to assess how DFL predicts savings in formal financial institutions, while controlling for various country-level factors. The results show that among the three dimensions of digital financial literacy, financial skills and behaviors positively affect savings. In contrast, financial attitudes like trust in financial institutions and confidence in managing financial matters negatively affect savings behavior. Overall, financial literacy explains 78.8% of the variation in savings at the formal financial institutions across countries, with cross-validation supporting the robustness of the findings. This study contributes to existing literature by integrating several digital and segmented dimensions of financial literacy and enhancing external validity by including a broad range of countries for cross-country generalization in financial inclusion research.  

This study investigates the relationship between banks' corporate governance practice and its impact on financial sustainability. In this study, twenty-four private commercial banks' data have been analyzed from 2014 to 2023. Our investigations included a variety of econometric models, including cross-sectional GLS, fixed effect, random effect, and pooled OLS. In our study, we found that including women on the Board of directors plays a positive role in ensuring the financial sustainability of banking sectors in Bangladesh. Apart from that, increasing the participation of independent directors on the board of directors, expenditures in research and development in the best banking practices, and inflation positively increase banks' profitability, which translates into financial sustainability. This finding is consistent with the findings of the random effect model. On the other hand, whenever we used ROE as an explained variable, we found that both in pooled OLS  and random effect methods, board diversity, CEO tenure, firms audited by the big four firms, and inflation have a positive association with ROE. In the fixed effect method, we observed that audit committee size and ownership concentration play a vital role in explaining the financial sustainability of private commercial banks in Bangladesh. In the FGLS method, We found that CEO tenure, age of the firm, firms audited by the big four firms, presence of the independent director on the board, and inflations significantly impact the financial sustainability of commercial banks of Bangladesh.

There are growing concerns about ongoing digital innovation in the private sector, which poses the possibility of central banks losing their autonomy and even being backward in payment efficiency. Hence, CBDC has become the reality of central banks with several economies' ongoing digitalization and adaptation. This review explores the growing literature on CBDC design, its emergence, variations, potentials, and challenges for smooth future applications. It addressed research articles and gray literature to accumulate the current implementation concerns. Findings show that CBDC poses prospects for exploiting emerging technology, efficient payment systems, tax collections, and tracking illegal financial activities. However, there were mixed expectations regarding financial inclusion, financial stability, bank runs, disintermediation, monetary policy, privacy, security, technology, sustainability, and regulatory framework. Finally, as CBDCs will reduce the influence of private money creation and digital alternatives, they ensure that the central bank remains at the center of the financial system in the future. 

This paper examines the exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) and its impact on home inflation in Bangladesh, particularly in the post-pandemic era. Examining important economic factors including the nominal exchange rate (NER), money supply (M2), industrial production (IP), and global commodity index (GCI) using monthly data from January 2002 to August 2023 helps one to grasp their combined influence on consumer price inflation (CPI). By means of Johansen cointegration and Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) approaches, the study reveals important short-term and long-term dynamics. Contrary to patterns in many emerging nations, the results show that changes in exchange rates have apparently little impact on home prices. Rather, changes in the money supply and world commodities prices mostly influence inflation; the latter becomes a major factor. The study also exposes an unexpected positive link between industrial production and CPI, implying complexity in Bangladesh's production-driven economic structure. Moreover, this investigation underlines how complex monetary expansion, external commodities shocks, and devaluation of money interact to shape inflationary pressures. These results offer legislators important new perspectives and support strong monetary policies and focused involvement in world commodities markets to help to lower inflation. This study clarifies ERPT in developing countries and provides direction on inflation control techniques for Bangladesh.

Financial inclusion aims to include the unbanked population in the official financial system. To quickly serve the unbanked population, this study aims to investigate the concept of agent banking as a means of financial inclusion and to assess the elements that influence the acceptance of agent banking in Bangladesh. The study also covered the main advantages of agent banking and pertinent barriers to its adoption. Using a basic judgmental sampling technique, 195 respondents from the Chittagong region made up the study's sample. Face-to-face interviews and a structured questionnaire were used to collect the data. The impact was investigated using statistical measures such as mean, standard deviation, correlation, and regression. Kendall's W test, also known as Kendall's coefficient of concordance, was utilized to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of accepting agent banking in this study. According to the result, there is a significant positive correlation between acceptance of agent banking and independent variables - perceived trust, convenience, perceived risk, awareness, and service quality. The study also found that easy banking is the key reason for agent banking, marked by the respondents, followed by the nearest location and adding new customers. Lack of training is the major challenge, followed by a lack of logistic support and cyber security risk in implementing agent banking in Bangladesh.

This paper explores the relationship between environmental, social, and governance performance (ESGP) and firm value in both emerging and developed economies, with the moderating impact of environmental uncertainty and competitive advantage. Using secondary unbalanced data spanning from 2011 to 2022, we examine both the direct and non-linear effects of ESG performance on firm value, employing advanced econometric estimation techniques such as two-step system GMM (2sGMM) and two-stage least square (2SLS). The analysis finds that: (1) ESG performance positively influences firm value in both Chinese and US banks, and the results remain valid after robustness test; (2) The results also confirm that ESG performance non-linearly influence firm value across the samples, with an inverted U-shape relationship; (3) Additionally, we further investigate the moderating effects of environmental uncertainty and competitive advantage, uncovering that environmental uncertainty dampens the ESGP-firm value relationship, while competitive advantage further amplifies it. This study contributes to the understanding of how ESG performance can act as strategic assets that align managerial and stakeholder interests, and improve firm performance, by underpinning agency, stakeholder, and the resource-based view theory. Practical insights are also provided for policymakers, regulators, and financial institutions regarding the use of ESGP as a competitive tool in uncertain and dynamic market environments.

The fraudulent claims for Unemployment Insurance (UI) have also risen massively in the United States especially during the onset of COVID-19 pandemic with billions of dollars that were lost. These approaches applied formerly in fraud detection and prevention have been challenged by new and advanced fraud systems. For this reason, AI, Big Data and Predictive Analytics are now crucial for improving fraud mitigation in UI programs. The aim of this research is to understand how far AI, Big Data and Predictive Analytics have been utilized, for how effective they are and the barriers they pose in tackling unemployment insurance fraud in the United States. An online quantitative self-administered questionnaire was administered where 200 participants from the unemployment insurance agencies of the U.S, covering fraud investigators, IT personnel, data analysts and policymakers, were included in the study. Data were analyzed to establish the correlation between technology adoption to application of anti-fraud measures using descriptive statistics, chi-square test and regression analysis. The survey shows that about 42.5% of agencies actively use AI and 34% of them use Big Data very often. However, difficulties like high costs, integration troubles and limited availability of specialized staff are still issues that make adoption a problem. The results of using AI and Big Data were moderate and optimistic but rather elevated, as seen through regression analysis; on the other hand, predictive analytics demonstrated large potential when applied successfully. The study’s results indicate that AI, Big Data and Predictive Analytics present enormous potential for mitigating UI fraud, although broad integration will not be possible without overcoming essential infrastructural and resource limitations.

This study examines the correlation between industry-specific loan disbursement and profitability in the banking sector of Bangladesh, with a particular focus on the influence of targeted lending on profitability. The study examines the impact of different variables such as total assets, total revenue, non-performing loans, and sector-specific loans (agricultural, transportation, construction, textile, pharmaceuticals, and food procurement), on profit after tax (PAT) by analyzing data from 41 commercial banks between 2009 and 2022. By employing various techniques such as Pooled Ordinary Least Squares (POLS), Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS), and the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), we have determined that total assets have a noteworthy adverse effect on PAT in both POLS and 2SLS models. Conversely, construction loans have a positive influence on PAT in these models. The total revenue consistently has a favorable effect on the profit after tax (PAT) in all models. In the GMM model, transportation loans and textile loans have a notable adverse effect on PAT, but pharmaceutical loans have a slight favorable effect. The presence of non-performing loans, total loans, agricultural loans, and food procurement loans does not have a substantial impact on the profitability after tax (PAT) in any of the models. So overall total revenue, construction loan and pharmaceutical loan have a positive impact on PAT and total assets, transportation loan and textile loan have a negative impact on PAT. This study emphasizes the significance of strategic lending in underdeveloped industries and provides practical implications for banking professionals and regulators to identify high-risk lending sectors and devise measures to improve long-term profitability. 

The novelty and advancement of technology have explored new avenues in the education sectors. Now e-learning has blended with face-to-face learning to increase its effectiveness. An integrated model is being proposed in this study to measure the continuance usage intention of students adopting e-learning services. With the constructs of ECM (confirmation, perceived usefulness), perceived ease of use and perceived self-efficacy proposed to measure their effect on satisfaction. Besides, to explore the impact of quality features on satisfaction and continuance intention, three major determinants of D&M’s ISS model such as system quality, service quality and information quality included in this study. 410 responses collected to do quantitative analysis. The PLS-SEM analysis showed that perceived ease of use has the strongest effect on perceived usefulness, followed by perceived self-efficacy on perceived ease of use and satisfaction with continuance intention.The study reveals that challenges in developing countries are unique and drives the learners differently than developed countries. The growing e-learning industry requires widespread research from national and institutional perspectives for holistic development in the Bangladesh education market.

This paper examines the consequences of banks’ performance on bank risk. The paper forms a theoretical model and delivers empirical evidence to identify that banks suffer in performance as the loans become bad. Using panel data from a sample of five (05) South-Asian emerging economies from 2011 to 2019, we have found that the banks are highly influenced by the development of non-performing loans (NPLs). We have primarily used Return on Asset (ROA) followed by Return on Equity (ROE) as a substitution to the performance of the banks and NPL as the proxy of bank risk. Simultaneous regression applying 3sls finds that Non-Performing Loan (NPL) hinders banks' growth, negatively affecting their profitability.

The paper intended to evaluate the extent of corporate disclosure compliance and its effect on the financial performance of Bangladeshi pharmaceutical companies listed on the DSE during a twelve-year period, from 2007 to 2020. The study explored the affinity between the Corporate Governance Disclosure Index (CGDI) and firm financial performance employing econometric techniques, such as fixed effect and random effect models. The study calculated the disclosure scores as a percentage of a given firm's overall score to the probable score it could achieve. The CGDI of the sample companies showed a positive and substantial effect on company performance as an accounting measure ROA and an insignificant effect as a market measure Tobin’s Q. The study also revealed that sample firms followed the BSEC guidelines partially. These findings have implications for companies that fail to comply with the full disclosure principle, which holds that a company must disclose all material information in its financial statements in order to touch the reader's comprehension of those statements. In addition, these results imply that the code of CG requires a thorough examination to make essential modifications.

The financial performance of banks relies heavily on properly utilizing their capital. However, bank ownership can have varying effects on the relationship between financial performance and capital. This study delves into this relationship by examining the impact of ownership on financial performance and bank capital. The study analyzes data from 44 commercial banks in Bangladesh and uses a two-step system generalized method of moments to address heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation issues. Unlike previous studies, this study confirms the significant effect of ownership on the relationship between bank financial performance and bank capital. The study's main findings are: (1) an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between bank capital and financial performance, implying that increasing capital can improve and reduce financial performance. (2) Private and Islamic commercial banks perform better than state-owned and conventional banks. (3) private-owned and Islamic commercial banks with higher capital are more likely to achieve higher profitability and financial success, while state-owned and conventional commercial banks with higher capital show lower profitability and weaker financial performance. Overall, this study offers significant practical implications for academics, researchers, and regulators interested in leveraging these findings.

This paper aims to examine the determinants influencing students' choices of academic majors, with a specific focus on business programs at private universities in Bangladesh. It evaluates the relative impact of various factors including subject interest, perceived prestige of the major, faculty reputation, earning potential, and availability of the major. Additionally, this study seeks to analyze how these determinants align with broader socio-economic and institutional contexts. Employing a hybrid analytics method, the study utilizes both quantitative analysis and factor analysis techniques. A dataset of 276 students from three private universities in Bangladesh was surveyed using a structured questionnaire based on a Likert scale. This data was collected over a period that reflects the current trends and perceptions among students regarding their choice of academic majors. The main findings of the study demonstrate that (i) intrinsic interest in the subject significantly influences major choice, (ii) perceptions of economic outcomes associated with the profession, such as earning potential, play a crucial role, and finally, (iii) institutional factors like faculty reputation and the prestige of the major also significantly impact students' decisions. These findings underscore the complexity of factors that students consider when choosing their academic majors, highlighting the interplay between personal interests, economic considerations, and institutional attributes.

This research examines domestic debt, private sector lending, and economic development in emerging countries, focusing on Bangladesh. This analysis uses 1960–2022 Bangladeshi secondary data, World Bank World Development Indicators and Bangladesh Ministry of Finance economic statistics. Domestic debt and private sector credit affect emerging nations' economic development, according to this study's theoretical approach. This research examines the link between two factors to add to the literature and provide Bangladesh-specific insights. It is quantitative research that examines domestic debt, private sector credit, and economic development using regression analysis and statistical testing. The conclusions aids Bangladesh's economic development policymakers, economists, and stakeholders. Understanding national debt, financing from the private sector, and the advancement of the country's economy helps policymakers manage debt, allocate credit, and set economic policy. The conducted study also improves theoretical understanding of economic development in underdeveloped countries and illuminates Bangladesh's unique conditions. It examined household debt, private sector lending, and Bangladeshi economic development as well as examines the patterns of economic growth in emerging nations to enhance policy debates and broaden knowledge.

The main objective of this study is to assess the impact of non-performing loans on bank lending behavior before and amid the COVID-19 pandemic. To do this research we have chosen fifteen private commercial banks in Bangladesh and data were taken from the year 2012 to the year 2021. Credit growth as a component of bank lending behavior was selected as the dependent variable and independent variables are non-performing loans to total loans, provision for loan losses to total loans, gross domestic product (GDP) rate, inflation rate, unemployment rate, total loans to total customer deposit, total equity to total asset, tier 1 ratio, growth of customer deposits, the dummy variables are used for incorporating the effect of covid-19. The paper suggests that NPL to total loan, provision for loan losses to total loan, total equity to total asset, and dummy variables (effect of covid-19 on NPL) are found statistically significant and inversely related to credit growth. Another three variables namely total loan to total deposit, deposit growth, and inflation variables are statistically significant and positively related to credit growth. All of the significant variables are consistent with general economic theory except the case for total equity to the total asset. To reduce non-performing loans, the banks may concentrate on improving corporate governance, maintaining strong loan review, thoroughly reviewing the KYC form, must ensure safety principles before approving a loan, collecting information from the CIB, accepting adequate collateral, examining the five C’s, name lending and connected party lending should be strictly prohibited which are quite related with behavioral and judgmental issues, would be a matter of further research.

The primary purpose of this research study is to reflect on financial anomalies, especially bank scams in Bangladesh. This study is an empirical approach developed through a well-structured Likert-scaled questionnaire to indicate different human behaviors, psychologies, and emotions that considerably impact financial incongruities in Bangladesh. The proposed model supported the structural equation model (SEM) and used SPSS Amos (Version 24) to build an attitudinal and behavioral model that reflects the complex relationships segment of this paper. Results show people try to rationalize irrational, unethical, and impertinent things and issues to achieve self-gain. Furthermore, corporations are treated as an entity for which they cannot be punished. Apart from this, human natures like greediness, dissatisfaction with what people have, societal status, possession and position, competition with peer groups for luxury, and tendency to imitate bad things are also responsible for bank scams in the Bangladeshi economy. Last but not least bad loan and default culture developed in the banking industry of Bangladesh only lacks execution laws, rules, and regulations.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between profitability measured with ROE along with EPS and several industry-specific factors such as underwriting risk, reinsurance dependence, solvency margin, leverage, liquidity risk, premium growth, size of the company, tangibility of assets as well as macroeconomic factors such as GDP growth, inflation, and stock market development of the general insurance companies of Bangladesh based on the sample of 7 insurance companies for the period of 2010-2019. For the analyses, several econometric models have been adopted to estimate the coefficients such as Pooled OLS, Cross-sectional GLS, Fixed-effect, Random-effect, and One-step GMM approaches. Moreover, diagnostic tests have also been conducted to examine the validity of the models such as model specification tests, heteroskedasticity tests, multicollinearity tests, autocorrelation tests, and unit-root tests. According to the computed coefficients, none of the macroeconomic variables utilized in the model affects profitability, except inflation, which positively affects ROE. Underwriting risk and size are found to negatively affect ROE but positively affect EPS. Of the two measures of profitability, only the EPS is affected by premium growth. Except for Fixed-effect, reinsurance dependence has a large positive influence on EPS and ROE. In contrast, liquidity and leverage have a positive impact on ROE. The tangibility of assets negatively affects both EPS and ROE where EPS is significant and ROE is insignificant only under fixed effect. Aside from premium growth, underwriting risk and solvency margin have a positive impact on EPS. Finally, using the GMM technique, we find that no lag variables are significant, indicating no profitability persistence. However, the model fits the data well for predicting EPS and ROE as profitability measures explaining 89.38 percent of EPS variation and 80.38 percent of ROE variation using Pooled OLS.

Sexually Transmitted Diseases/ Infections (STDs/STIs) are a major public health problem and a leading cause of morbidity among women in developing countries like Bangladesh. According to WHO, 2006, STDs/STIs ranks second as a cause of healthy life loss among women in the reproductive age group. This research has been conducted on examining knowledge awareness and prevention of STDs among women. It was conducted in two selected slums (Kathalbagan’s Lakkhi slum and Moghbazar slum) of Dhaka city in Bangladesh. This study was conducted through quantitative research and convenience sampling techniques. A structured questionnaire was developed to collect data on knowledge awareness and prevention of STDs/STIs. The study shows that 68.3% of respondents have knowledge about STDs, in this research majority of respondents are not aware of risk factors associated with STDs. This study examines that, for building awareness, majority of respondents preferred “Radio and Television” as the most important media that can build awareness for STDs among slum women. Special counseling is mandatory for the victims, along with sex education. Awareness about healthy sexual behaviors, a hygienic lifestyle, and instruction about the correct use of male condoms should be promoted to reduce the risk of health complications and greatly reduce the spread of STDs not in Bangladesh but also in developing countries.

The main purpose of this study is to identify the impact of intellectual capital efficiency (ICE) also known as knowledge capital along with its components human capital efficiency (HCE) and structural capital efficiency (SCE) on bank risk-taking behavior in Bangladesh. To reveal this effect, the study uses generalized method of moment (GMM) estimator and Two Stages Least Square estimator (to check the Robustness) and unbalanced panel data of 32 commercial banks of Bangladesh consisting of 530 bank-year observations during the year 2003-2020. The main results of the study are: (a) ICE is significantly and positively connected with a bank’s credit risk which indicates credit risk grows up with the increase of Intellectual capital efficiency, and (b) Both the human capital efficiency and structural capital efficiency positively impacts credit risk but the impact of SCE is not significant as HCE, (c) Bank performance (ROA), RWATA, macro variable inflation, and size have a negative impact on bank risk whereas ID and GGDP insignificant positively impact on bank’s risk. Finally, the results of the study will assist the stakeholders, policymakers, and academicians for future research.