Rana Ejaz Ali Khan

Tourism-led growth hypothesis: a case study of Pakistan.

Economists are of the view that tourism leads to economic development just like human and physical capital and exports. A few studies have discussed this issue empirically. The current study aims to estimate the long-run relationship between income from tourism and the economic growth of Pakistan by using the annual time series data of 1971–2008, and by employing the Johansen Juselius cointegration, autoregressive distributed lag model and rolling windows bounds testing approach to check the stability of the model. The results confirm the long-run relationship between income from tourism and economic growth and explain that income from tourism has led economic growth in Pakistan except in the years 2006, 2007, and 2008.Economists are of the view that tourism leads to economic development just like human and physical capital and exports. A few studies have discussed this issue empirically. The current study aims to estimate the long-run relationship between income from tourism and the economic growth of Pakistan by using the annual time series data of 1971–2008, and by employing the Johansen Juselius cointegration, autoregressive distributed lag model and rolling windows bounds testing approach to check the stability of the model. The results confirm the long-run relationship between income from tourism and economic growth and explain that income from tourism has led economic growth in Pakistan except in the years 2006, 2007, and 2008.

Economic Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Pakistan

Abstract Pakistan aims to increase the investment GDP ratio by attracting foreign direct investment (FDI). The foreign investors mostly from the developed dynamic centers are enhancing international production by investing in resource abundant economies. Having an overview of the influx of cross border investments, this paper empirically attempted to investigate the determinants of foreign direct investment in Pakistan. The analysis enabled identification of some economic determinants of FDI in Pakistan, like GDP growth rate, volume of exports, human population, tariff on imports, and price index. Volume of exports has been emerged the most powerful determinant of FDI. The government should make a paradigm shift in its investment policy to attract FDI. It should focus on export-oriented industries instead of encouraging FDI for domestic consumption.

Determinants of Inflation: A Case of Pakistan (1970-2007)

Abstract The high inflation is undesirable phenomenon. The causing factors of high inflation remained inconclusive by both monetary and fiscal perceptions. The procurement prices and administered prices along with imported inflation have contributed to higher inflation. The paper focuses on the determinants of inflation in Pakistan using four price indicators, i.e. CPI, WPI, SPI, and GDP Deflator for the long-run (time period of 1971-72 to 2005-06). It is found that depreciation of exchange rate and increase in the value of imports has contributed shooting up of CPI, WPI, SPI and GDP deflator. The support prices of sugarcane, rice, wheat, and cotton (collectively) have affected all the indicators positively however, the support price of wheat independently has affected only GDP deflator. Expectation effect has also contributed positively towards all the indicators. Contrary to the general perception that budget deficit creates inflation, our results explain that budget deficit has played no role in boosting all the four indicators of inflation in Pakistan in the long-run.

Financial Sector Reforms and Household Savings in Pakistan: An ARDL Approach

The study empirically examined the relationship between the financial sector reforms and household savings in Pakistan by applying the ARDL cointegration technique on annual time series data for the years 1988 to 2008. Empirical findings indicated that the financial liberalization index negatively created an impact on the household savings in the short-run, as well as in the long-run, suggesting that financial liberalization slid down the savings instead of enhancing it. Policy-makers should not rely on financial reforms to augment household savings. However, per-capital income, agriculture sector GDP and remittances positively affected the household savings in the short-run, while the real deposit rate negatively affected the household savings in the long-run. It is important for the country to maintain high growth rate for the increasing per-capital income which would contribute in enhancing household savings. As such, the growth of the agriculture sector and remittances should also be a part of the policy. Nonetheless, the dependency ratio also negatively affected the household savings in the shortrun.

Determinants of food security in rural areas of Pakistan

Abstract: Out of 120 districts of Pakistan (for rural areas) only 40 are food secure while 80 (67 percent) are food insecure. Within these food insecure districts, 38 (46 percent) are extremely food insecure. The matter of food security in rural areas is of immense nature and needs to be probed. A number of factors are responsible for the situation. The current paper examines the determinants of three aspects of food security in rural areas of Pakistan, i.e. food availability, accessibility and absorption. For the purpose a series of models is applied on district level data of rural areas of Pakistan. The production of wheat, rice, maize, pulses, oilseeds, poultry meat and fish at the district level is found to affect food availability positively. All the district except of Sindh are more probable to be food insecure in availability. In the food accessibility electrification and adult literacy emerged as the factors having negative effect. Child immunization, safe drinking water and number of hospitals have shown positive effect on food absorption.

Agricultural Land Expansion in Pakistan: An Empirical Analysis

The paper examines the long-run determinants of agricultural land expansion by JJ cointegration technique. The results of cointegration indicates that there exists a long-run relationship between agriculture land expansion and the factors like agricultural prices, agricultural income, live stock population, human population, agricultural technology, fertilizer use, irrigation and rainfall. The normalized cointegrating vector shows that the agricultural prices, fertilizer use, irrigation and technology positively affect agricultural land expansion, while, human population, agricultural income and rainfall negatively influence agricultural land expansion. It is also found that livestock population has insignificant impact on the agricultural land expansion. The study proposed to agriculture policy makers to increase the use of technology and irrigational infrastructure along with adjusted agricultural prices to expand the agricultural land for agricultural growth.

Labor force participation of married women in Punjab (Pakistan)

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to highlight the factors that influence the decision of married women (in the age group of 16-60 years) to participate in labor force activities. Design/methodology/approach - This is an empirical study employing the non-linear maximum likelihood probability (probit) function on primary data (3,911 observations). Findings - Besides other variables it has been observed that poverty remains an important determinant of female labor participation. Research limitations/implications - On the basis of this paper, a socio-economic policy can be formulated for a developing country like Pakistan. Practical implications - A development policy (especially considering the gender aspects) can be formulated on the basis of this research for the enhancement of human resource development for a developing and an orthodox economy like Pakistan. Originality/value - This paper is beneficial to researchers, policy makers, and social scientists for the enhancement of the level of social welfare and equity through its findings.

Trade Growth and Poverty: A Case of Pakistan

It is generally argued that open trade is crucial for economic growth and development. The economic literature also argues that growth is an important option for reducing poverty in developing countries. The paper analyzed the causality between the trade, growth and poverty for Pakistan using annual time series data from 1973-2009. Granger causality results based on Error-Correction Models have shown that in the case of Pakistan there exists two way relationship between trade and growth in the long-run but for the short-run growth enhance the trade. For the growth and poverty, there exists long-run relation from growth to poverty while for the short-run there exists no relationship. It may be concluded that international trade can play an important role towards growth and ultimately alleviation of poverty. From the policy perspective government should focus on trade.

Household Choice of Public Versus Private Schooling: A Case Study of Bahawalpur City

Government of Punjab is committed to attain the universalization of school education by providing free education and even in a number of districts the free books and through the programs of food for education. The stipends on the subsidized schooling are also part of the policy by Government of Punjab. The rapid increase in enrolment in private schools reflects the partial failure of these schemes and making the target of universalization of school education difficult. The paper examines the household choice of private versus public sector schools as an outcome of child, household and school characteristics by using logit model. Data has been collected from Bahawalpur city through stratified sampling of clusters and random sampling of households. A survey of 627 households having at least one school-going child made the data available. The study found that income of the household, education of the parents, English as medium of instruction in school and distance of public school from the household enhance the preference of private schools. To universalize the school education more public sector schools are required near to the households. The adaptation of English as medium of instruction may increase the school enrolment.

A Comparative Analysis of Rural and Urban Child Labor in Pakistan

The paper presents a comparative analysis of determinants of child labor in urban and rural areas. A simple theoretical model (Probit) of household’s decision about child’s time allocation is used. From the econometric data sets of urban and rural areas of two districts of Pakistan, evidence is provided suggesting that urban and rural children have different determinants of child labor reflecting their different socio-economic background, e.g. education of head of household (as a continuous as well as binary variable) impacts the child schooling positively but the effect of continuous variable is much stronger for urban households, employment status of head of household impacts the child schooling positively in urban areas but negatively inrural areas. Mother’s employment is complement to child schooling in urban areas but substitute in rural areas. It negatively impacts the child labor in urban but positively in rural areas. Poverty affects the child schooling three times more strongly in rural households than urban ones. Gender discrimination is schooling participation is higher in rural households but in labor force participation of children, it is higher in urban households. Part-time labor force participation of children increases by incremental change in age in urban householdsbut it decreases in rural households. A few number of determinants are same for both groups of children. For policy implication different sets of policies are required for urban and rural areas to enhance child welfare.