The Pakistan Development Review
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Measuring the Performance and Achievement of Microfinance Institutions Incorporating Subsidy Dependence Index and Outreach Index in Pakistan’s Case
Get PDFThe curse of poverty had remained a significant problem
throughout the history of civilisations. Even in this era of development
at least one third of the world population is suffering from the problem
of poverty. With such a huge number of human beings living in such a
deprived situation, it becomes very crucial to target this issue and
search out feasible ways to overcome it. Microfinance has come one of
the important tools for reducing poverty. It offers a solution by
stimulating economic growth and development. Established microfinance
institutions use many instruments to fulfill their promise of poverty
reduction. One of those instruments is microcredit. Through this
instrument microfinance institutions provide small-scale loans to
individuals or groups so that the borrowers could initiate their
business and break out of poverty cycle
Causality Linkages among Energy Poverty, Income Inequality, Income Poverty and Growth: A System Dynamic Modelling Approach
Get PDFThe energy services stipulation of a country discloses its
importance as a decency of course of action necessary for economic
prosperity, lessening the poverty and depolarising the social asymmetry
[Barnes, et al. (2011)]. The accomplishment of basic needs of energy
services that include excess to electricity, commercial use of energy
for production process as well as usage of electricity in the
residential areas and modern use of energy sources for cooking purposes
portraits an image of high-quality living standard of individuals and
offers a way forward to economic development.12 The notion of pro-poor
growth is well documented in the recent literature for assurance of
thinning the poverty that is congregated through translation of growth
into the lives of poor by reshaping the income distribution23 for
marginalised group of people. Ekouevi and Tuntivate (2012) and studies
of international agencies [AGECC (2010); WHO (2006); UNDP and WHO
(2009)] have preliminary acknowledged the need of improving the access
to reliable and affordable modern energy services in the developing
economies for economic prosperity and social welfare of
individuals
Wojciech W. Charemza andDerekF. Deadman. NewDirections in Econometric Practice, General to Specific Modelling,Cointegration and Vector Auto Regression. Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. 1997. Pages 360. £28.00 (Paperback).
Get PDFighly acclaimed and endorsed by leading econometricians, the
book “New Directions in Econometric Practice” is not new among the
econometrics and statisticians. It is more of a textbook for students of
econometrics and statistics at various levels.It impressively attempts
to addressthe main objective of explaining ‘how to practice
econometrics’. It provides an accessibleand user-friendly approach to a
new approach and methodology presented by David Hendry in his
book,‘Dynamic Econometrics’. The book under review provides a practical
and hands-on illustration ofHendry’s approach, enabling students to use
it for themselves inreal world time-series econometric problems. The
second edition of thebook attempts to address the shortfalls identified
by some reviewers in the first edition. By providing practical
guidelines in terms of empirical illustration of each technique,using
DHSY’s suggested aggregated timeseries consumption function on PC-Gives
(8.1 Professional), it opens new trails ofresearch. The book is
primarily designed for providing an intuitive understanding of recent
developments in econometrics to nonspecialist econometricians and is
widely adopted by teachers, students and practitioners alik
Food Consumption Patterns and Implications for Poverty Reduction in Pakistan
Get PDFThe global food crisis of mid-2000s resulted in a several-fold
increase in the prices of essential food items. Resultantly, the
incidence of food insecurity, hunger, and poverty has increased in many
developing countries [Ivanic and Martin (2008); Harttgen and Klasen
(2012); De Hoyos and Medvedev (2009); World Bank (2010); Regmi and Seale
(2010); Andreyeva, et al. (2010). Pakistan is also hit hard by this
crisis. Prices of several food items increased by more than a 100
percent since 2006-07. Consequently, nearly half of the population is
currently unable to meet its minimum (subsistence) caloric requirements
for healthy and productive living [Malik, et al. (2014)]. A large
proportion of household expenditure is spent on food (on average about
48 percent in 2010) and thus very little is left for the other
expenditures necessary for human welfare, such as, health and education.
Moreover, dietary diversity is extremely limited. Nearly 70 percent of
food expenditure is on cereals, dairy, sweeteners, and fats. Wheat is
the major source of calories, providing about half of the total daily
calories [Malik, et al. (2014)]. However, the price of wheat increased
by 125 percent between 2005-6 and 2010-11. Existing analyses indicate
that these price shocks entail significant additional expenditures to
maintain their pre-crisis consumption levels [Haq, et al. (2008);
Friedman, Hong, and Xiaohui (2011)]. There is thus overwhelming evidence
that rising food prices and the decline in real wages have serious
implications for poverty, food security, and nutrition through food
consumption patterns in the countr
Mediating Effect of Advertising Expenditure on Labour Productivity: A Case of Manufacturing Industries in Pakistan
Get PDFThis paper explores the possibility that the labour
productivity enhancing effects often ascribed to capital intensity may
partly act through some mediating variable. The paper uses a mediation
model to estimate direct and indirect effects of capital intensity on
labour productivity in Pakistan‘s manufacturing industries. The data
involve 229 industries at five-digits level of aggregation. The data are
taken from Census of Manufacturing Industries for the year 2005-06.
Using capital intensity as an independent variable and advertising
expenditure as a mediating variable, the paper estimates total, direct,
and indirect effects on labour productivity. Approximately 18 percent of
total effects on labour productivity are found to be mediated through
advertising expenditure. The statistical significance of indirect
effects is tested using standard normal tests as well as bootstrap
method, and these effects are found to be significant. JEL
classification: D24, C31, M37, L60 Keywords: Productivity, Mediation,
Advertising, Industrie
The Presidential Address
Get PDFAslam-o-alaeekum! Thank you very much for coming. I would like
to welcome you all to the Conference and hope it would be of benefit to
us, not just academically and intellectually but that it would be of
benefit to billions of people on earth who are living in abject poverty.
One of the important things to realise is that this is not inevitable
but rather is a result of the choices we have made. What are these wrong
choices and how can they be changed is the theme of this Conference. One
of the things I would like to say is that world is a battle place of
ideas and these are being played out on a large scale. In the start of
the 20th century, growth was understood as the process of capital
accumulation. Marx and Keynes and classical economists agree on this
idea that growth is about getting more wealth. However, this idea has
fallen into disrepute and the clear conclusion is that growth is about
development of human capabilities. It is a multidimensional process. It
has many components and just the accumulation of wealth is not the
solution to the problems we face. Again, it was thought that development
was about gaining technology and building industries but I think the
realisation is growing stronger that it is all about human
lives
Measuring Multidimensional Poverty and Inequality in Pakistan
Get PDFThe key development objective of Pakistan, since its
existence, has been to reduce poverty, inequality and to improve the
condition of its people. While this goal seems very important in itself
yet is also necessary for the eradication of other social, political and
economic problems. The objective to eradicate poverty has remained same
but methodology to analysing this has changed. It can be said that
failure of most of the poverty strategies is due to lack of clear choice
of poverty definition. A sound development policy including poverty
alleviation hinges upon accurate and well-defined measurements of
multidimensional socio-economic characteristics which reflect the ground
realities confronting the poor and down trodden rather than using some
abstract/income based criteria for poverty measurement. Conventionally
welfare has generally been measured using income or expenditures
criteria. Similarly, in Pakistan poverty has been measured mostly in
uni-dimension, income or expenditures variables. However, recent
literature on poverty has pointed out some drawbacks in measuring
uni-dimensional poverty in terms of money. It is argued that
uni-dimensional poverty measures are insufficient to understand the
wellbeing of individuals. Poverty is a multidimensional concept rather
than a unidimensional. Uni-dimensional poverty is unable to capture a
true picture of poverty because poverty is more than income
deprivatio
Determinants of Human Development Disparities: A Cross District Analysis of Punjab, Pakistan
Get PDFHuman development is the primary objective of all developing
economies of the world. It has great importance in social planning.
Every individual, society and nation wants a prosperous life. Different
instruments are used, investments are undertaken and different policy
frameworks are designed to achieve this target. Human development is a
process to enlarge the choices of people. So, the definition of human
development is very broad, but people have three basic and essential
choices which are acceptable at every level of development. First,
people always have desire to live a long and healthy life. Second, they
have desire to expand their knowledge. Third, people have desire to
access the resources needed for a decent standard of living [UNDP
(1990)]
Can We Solve the Issue of Poverty Without Solving the Issue of Conventional Economic Paradigm: A Critical Review
Get PDFThe primary focus of economics is to allocate resources in
order to achieve the well-being of humans. Wellbeing has many
dimensions, ranging from the level of mere subsistence to the equality
of opportunities to accumulate, and to safeguard life and wealth.
Poverty, thus, is one of the parameters for measuring the welfare of
society in general. Given this importance, the Millennium Development
Goals aim at halving the world poverty by 2015. Many organisations in
the world set poverty eradication as one of their key objectives.
Likewise, poverty reduction has got a central place in the international
politics. Accordingly, each country including Pakistan has launched
programmes for the alleviation of this great menace. The election
manifesto of all the mainstream political parties in Pakistan includes
poverty alleviation as one of their main goals. Additionally, poverty
alleviation is one of the major subjects of talks in electronic media
and in the editorials of newspapers, both at the national and at the
international level. Nevertheless, poverty is still a major problem of
humanity across the globe
Trends of Income Inequality and Polarisation in Pakistan for the Period 1990-2008
Get PDFTrends of income inequality and polarisation previously were
calculated by Arshad, et al. (2008) in Pakistan for the period of 04
years from 1992-93 to 2001-02, using Gini-coefficient and Bossert and
Schworm (2006) measures respectively. Empirical analysis of polarisation
has huge importance in the economic policy making. However, polarisation
has been less probed, rather un-explored phenomenon. So far only a
handful studies have been conducted on this topic and most of the
covered western countries with an exception of India. This research area
appears to be unexplored in Pakistan, except for a few studies which led
to the foundation for the present study