The Pakistan Development Review
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Govinda Chandra Rath Tribal Development in India: The Contemporary Debate. New Delhi: Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. 2006. 340 Pages. Paperback. Indian Rs 450.00.
Get PDFThe word ‘Tribe’ denotes a group of people living in primitive
or barbarous conditions. It is a social group with territorial
affiliation, endogamous with no specialisation of functions. They have a
headman or a chief who controls the activities of that group. Tribals
have several sub-groups all of them together known as ‘Tribal Society’.
It is really difficult to say whether they are Indigenous or not but
they are the earliest settlers of India. They were inhabitants of
forests since prehistory and even now some of these groups follow the
same trends and live in forests. Tribals constitute around 8.08 percent
of the total Indian population, and of the total tribal population
around 80 percent are found in Central India
Voice and Votes—Does Political Decentralisation Work for the Poor and for Women? Empirical Evidence from the 2005 Local Government Elections in Pakistan
Get PDFDecentralisation is associated with the hope that “bringing
government closer to the people” will improve the provision of public
services by increasing people’s voice in decision-making, and by making
the government more accountable to them. Decentralisation is also
associated with the hope that disadvantaged groups of society, including
the poor and women, will have better possibilities to exercise voice at
the local level. Some countries have combined decentralisation with
affirmative action, for example, by reserving seats in local councils
for women and other disadvantaged groups. Yet the empirical evidence
regarding the impacts of decentralisation has been mixed [Bardhan
(2002); von Braun and Grote (2002); Jütting, et al. (2004); Steiner
(2005)]. In many cases, political decentralisation has not been
associated with fiscal and administrative decentralisation, thus
limiting the scope of what local governments can actually do. Building
capacity at the local level and overcoming coordination problems has
been another challenge. Local elite capture has been identified as a
major problem that can prevent positive effects of decentralisation for
the poor, especially in societies with hierarchical power structures at
the local level [Bardhan (2002)]. With regard to gender, there are
concerns that decentralisation—even if associated with affirmative
action—will not be sufficient to overcome gender-based discrimination.
Again, the empirical evidence is mixed [ADB (2004)]. Chatthobadhay and
Duflo (2004) found that that women who were elected as village leaders
under the reservation policy in the Indian states of West Bengal and
Rajastan invested more in those public goods that more closely linked to
women’s concerns, such as drinking water. Baden (1999) showed that it
depends on local power structures and on the availability and
competition over resources whether or not women benefit from
decentralisation. In view of the mixed results, important knowledge gaps
remain regarding the possibilities to promote public service provision
for the poor and for women through political decentralisation and
associated affirmative action
S. Akbar Zaidi. Issues in Pakistan’s Economy. Second Edition Revised and Expanded. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2005. xii+530 Pages. Paperback. Pak. Rs 595.00.
Get PDF“Issues in Pakistan’s Economy” by S. Akbar Zaidi was first
published in 1999. The book provided comprehensive information on
different aspects of the economy in Pakistan since independence. The
idea of writing this book originated from Oxford University Press as
there was no book on the economy of Pakistan to benefit the graduate
students, researchers, scholars, academicians, and the general public.
The book was prescribed as a standard text book in the area of issues in
Pakistan’s economy. It is also used as a standard book on the courses on
South Asia’s development, economic history, and political economy of the
region. The book became a best seller due to its subject matter. That is
why a great need was felt to update the book that forced the author to
expand, update, and revise the book and improve the shortcomings left in
the previous edition. The Second edition includes a large amount of new
research material. Also, the most recent available data have been
included in the tables of the text throughout the book. Three new
chapters have been added, some of the chapters have been reformulated,
and the new arrivals in theory and empirical research have also been
incorporated, accordingly. The book under review presents the important
issues in the form of boxed text, appendices, chapter summaries, and
provides suggested readings to further enhance the knowledge in specific
areas. The efforts and the pains of the author in completing this book
are highly laudable in producing such a valuable piece of research on
economic development in Pakistan over the fifty-seven years to benefit
the end users in completing their studies, research work, and
policy-oriented assignments
Fiscal Decentralisation and Economic Growth in Pakistan
Get PDFFiscal decentralisation is seen as a means to enhance the
economic efficiency of the government and also promote economic growth.
Fiscal decentralisation is the empowerment of fiscal responsibilities to
the sub-national governments, involving devolution of powers to tax and
spend along with arrangements for correcting the imbalances between
resources and obligations. The effectiveness of fiscal decentralisation
depends upon: (a) appropriate expenditure assignments—with division of
functions among different levels of government depending upon their
comparative advantage (called the principle of subsidiarity); (b)
appropriate tax or revenue assignments; and (c) the efficient design of
a system of transfers and its proper implementation [Kardar
(2006)]
Sectoral Effects of Monetary Policy: Evidence from Pakistan
Get PDFDoes monetary policy have economically significant effects on
the real output? Historically, economists have tended to hold markedly
different views with regard to this question. In recent times, however,
there seems to be increasing consensus among monetary economists and
policy-makers that monetary policy does have real effects, at least in
the short run.1 Consequently, focus of monetary policy analysis has
recently shifted from the big question of whether money matters, to
emphasising other aspects of monetary policy and its relations to real
economic activity. One aspect that has received considerable attention
of late is the sectoral or regional effects of monetary policy shocks.
Recent studies on the subject make it quite clear that different sectors
or regions of the economy respond differently to monetary shocks. This
observation has profound implications for the macroeconomic management
as the central bank will have to weigh the varying consequences of its
actions on different sectors or regions of the economy. For instance,
the tightening of monetary policy might be considered mild from the
aggregate perspective, yet it can be viewed as excessive for certain
sectors. If this is true then monetary policy should have strong
distributional effects within the economy. Accordingly, information on
which sectors react first and are more adversely affected by monetary
tightening provides valuable information to monetary authorities in
designing appropriate monetary policies. Additionally, the results can
contribute to our understanding of the underlying nature of transmission
mechanism. And for that reason, many economists have called for a
disaggregated analysis of monetary transmission mechanism [e.g., Domac
(1999), Dedola and Lippi (2005), Ganley and Salmon (1997), Carlino and
DeFina (1998)]
Determinants of Farm Revenue in Pakistan
Get PDFWill small farm viability decline with the reduction of
average farm size in Pakistan? This paper addresses the determinants of
rural household and farm-related income. Using the 2001 PIDE Household
Survey, the approach developed captures the potential interactions
between farm returns and household, farm, and factor market
characteristics (schooling, family size, land tenure and operational
size, access to water, credit, and capital). Econometric results show:
(a) returns to additional schooling and the revenue elasticity of
operated acres increase with farm size; (b) medium and large farm
renters would be willing to pay more than observed rents, implying an
incentive to increase farm size at the prevailing rental values; (c)
owneroperated farms, landowners who also leases in, and fixed rental
tenants earn higher revenues than sharecropping tenants. The difference,
however, between landowner/fix-renter income and sharecropper income
varies with family and farm size, as well as water use. While these
results favour farm size increase, the results also show that off-farm
and non-farm income sources are relatively more important for small
farmers, contributing to their viability. JEL classification: D13, Q12,
Q15 Keywords: Pakistan, Land Markets, Rural Factor Markets, Revenue
Functio
The Impact of Public Investment on Private Investment: A Disaggregated Analysis
No full textThe impact of public investment on private investment has been
a matter of great interest in economic literature. Classical economists
believed that public investment crowds out private investment. While
Keynesian economists counter this argument and argued that public
investment increases or crowds in private investment because of the
multiplier effect. Many of the empirical studies have directly examined
this by testing whether a statistically significant relationship exists
or not, between public investment and private investment. The empirical
work appears with mixed statistical results on the relationship between
public and private investment. Results of Erenburg and Wohar (1995),
Pereira (2001, 2003), Pereira and Roca-Sagales (2001), Hyder (2002) and
Naqvi (2002) showed that public investment crowds in private investment
while Pradhan, Ratha and Sarma (1990), Haque and Montiel (1993), Ahmed
(1994), Voss (2002) and Narayan (2004) showed that public investment
crowds out private investment
Foreign Currency Deposits and International Liquidity Shortages in Pakistan
Get PDFThis Working Paper should not be reported as representing the
views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of
the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF
policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s)
and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. This paper
studies the implications of foreign currency deposits (FCDs) for
international liquidity shortages in Pakistan. The analysis focuses on
how the large volume of FCDs and the specific institutional
characteristics of those deposits have made the Pakistan economy highly
vulnerable to exogenous shocks. The analysis shows that FCDs created
another channel for government borrowing, and fiscal sustainability in a
“closed” system may be very different from sustainability in a more
“open” system. There is a need to think of these issues in terms of
total balance sheet vulnerability, and we recommend measures that would
make domestic-currency-denominated assets attractive to investors. JEL
Classification Numbers: E52; F41 Keywords: Capital Account
Liberalization, Financial Development, Dollarizatio
Judicial Systems and Authoritarian Transitions
Get PDFFor several decades, development policy specialists and donor
agencies have championed investment in the judicial systems of
developing countries to promote economic growth and, eventually,
democracy. The assumption of a causal link among these three phenomena
motivates donors’ investments in the physical and human capacity of the
legal system. Some reforms are narrowly focused—better enforcement of
property rights and contract law—conducive to enhanced trade and
investment. Although these narrow reform programs imply that political
liberalisation is an ultimate objective, studies are unable to
substantiate causality between the rule of law, economic growth and
democracy [Carothers (2003)]. Autocratic regimes may establish courts to
protect the property rights of regime insiders and to expropriate the
rights of outsiders. In our view a rule of law will have emerged only
once the state has achieved legitimacy in the hearts and minds of
citizens. The idea that better rule of law would generate economic
growth, which would in turn build constituencies for democratic reforms
will be questioned in this paper. An alternative view will be suggested,
most notably the alignment of national identity with the institutions of
the state is critical to establishing a rule of law
Why Does Agricultural Growth Dominate Poverty Reduction in Low- and Middle-income Countries?
Get PDF“Alternative models have to compete on the basis of their
ability to give a satisfying account of some facts. Facts ask for
explanations, and explanations ask for new facts”. Robert M. Solow,
Daedalus (Fall 2005) This paper provides an explanation of the relation
between agricultural growth and poverty reduction for open economies
with full employment. The analysis also shows that the poverty-reducing
impact of agricultural growth in an open economy is far greater if there
is unemployed labour or if the supply of labour is highly
elastic—conditions often thought to prevail even in open economies. The
model draws attention to the critical role of the rural non-tradable
sector in poverty reduction. While ample data are available to show that
sector to have a large share of employment, even relative to agriculture
itself, data for other variables for the sector such as the share of
GDP, labour intensity, price, and income elasticities of demand are not
available. Thus, an important contribution of the paper is to establish
the need for such data if the processes of poverty reduction are to be
understood. JEL classification: Q01, I30 Keywords: Agricultural Growth,
Poverty, Developing Countries, Open Econom