Saima Nawaz

Education Poverty in Pakistan: A Spatial Analysis at District Level

This study aims, first to construct an education poverty index (EPI) for Pakistan using household data; second, to investigate the spatial differences of education poverty (EP) at district level; and third to find the socio-economic determinants of EP. Four different dimensions are used to construct EPI using the Alkire Foster (AF) method. The results show that 26 per cent households are below the poverty cut-off in Pakistan. The ratio is high in rural area of Pakistan (33 per cent) as compared to urban areas of Pakistan (12 per cent). Similar trend has been observed across all provinces. The majority of the households are deprived in terms of cost of education. Empirical analysis shows that various socio-economic variables such as income, regional variation and awareness play very important role in explaining EP. To eradicate education deprivation, area- and dimension-specific policies are required to make efficient use of scarce resources.

FISCAL POLICY, INSTITUTIONS AND GROWTH: NEW INSIGHTS

The paper attempts to analyze the impact of fiscal policy on economic growth while considering level of development and controlling for state of institutions. We extend the Solow growth model by incorporating fiscal policy and institutions through using total factor productivity. Our empirical analysis includes a panel of 56 countries. The empirics demonstrate that impact of fiscal policy on growth is statistically insignificant in the full sample. However, splitting the sample into developed and developing economies, positive association with economic growth in developed economies and negative association in developing economies observed. Our findings thus inform that fiscal policy contributes positively to growth only in developed economies. The reason for this seems to be an enabling institutional environment in developed economies. This kind of enabling institutional environment allows fiscal policy to play positive role in developed economies and absence of such environment contributes to the negative impact of fiscal policy in developing economies.