Poverty, inflation and economic growth: empirical evidence from Pakistan

This study aims to investigate the role of economic growth and inflation in explaining the prevalence of poverty in Pakistan. ARDL bound testing approach to co-integration confirms the existence of long run relationship among the variables of poverty, economic growth, inflation, investment and trade openness over the period of 1972-2008. Empirical results show that economic growth and investment have negative and inflation has positive impact on poverty. The effect of trade openness on poverty is insignificant in this study. The short run analysis reveals that economic growth has negative and inflation has positive impact on poverty whereas the role of investment and trade openness in poverty reduction in short run is not significant.Poverty, Inflation, Economic Grovvth, Pakistan, Macroeconomic Policy, Welfare, Trade Openness

Do Circumstances Matter For Earnings? An Empirical Evidence From Household Level Survey In Punjab (Pakistan)

This study investigates the role of circumstances and efforts in determining the income differences of individuals by using household-level data from the second wave of Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) conducted in Punjab province of Pakistan. Education and work experience of the individuals have been used as proxy of efforts while education, region of residence, and wealth status of individuals’ fathers are used to indicate circumstances. Three different models have been used to estimate the effects of efforts and circumstances upon incomes of the individuals. The first model estimates the effects of indicators of efforts upon income of the individuals while the second model estimates the effects of indicators of circumstances upon income of individuals. The third model combines the indicators of efforts and circumstances into one equation and estimates their effects on individuals’ incomes.To cope with the possible problem of endogeneity and omitted variable bias, Monte Carlo simulation bootstrapping technique with 500 iterations has been used. The results show that both efforts and circumstances play an important role to determine income of the people in the province of Punjab.Education and working experience of individuals are positively and significantly related with their earnings. Similarly variables related with circumstances (father’s education, father’s region of residence and father’s wealth status) have also been found to be significantly related with income of individuals

IDENTIFICATION OF ACTIVE AND PASSIVE REGIMES OF FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICIES IN PAKISTAN

Fiscal and monetary policies are two important macroeconomic policies which work by adopting different policy regimes to achieve the desired objectives. The present study is an endeavor to identify active and passive policy regimes and attempts to reveal the relatively more dominant policy in case of Pakistan. The study by utilizing time series annual data from 1972 to 2022 uses monetary and fiscal policy reaction functions to reveal the overall active or passive behaviors of fiscal and monetary policies. The study further uses recursive estimation technique and empirically estimates the fiscal and monetary policy reaction functions to identify the year-to-year policy regimes adopted by authorities in Pakistan. Money market rate in taken as proxy for monetary while budget deficit as a percent of GDP is taken for fiscal policy. Output gap, inflation rate, debt as a percentage of GDP, and nominal exchange rate are the study variables. The study finds that both policies interact 40 times out of which monetary policy remained active for 29 and passive for 11 times. Similarly, fiscal policy remained active for 30 and passive for 10 times. Both policies remained pro-cyclical for 19 and counter- cyclical for 21 times. Using the max-min and min-max criteria of pay- off matrix, it is found that monetary policy is Pakistan is more dominant policy as compared to fiscal policy. To ensure the increasing effectiveness of both policies, it is recommended that the authorities should adopt the optimal policy mix by working in coordination while formulating the policies

Health Costs of Low Intensity Level Violent and Non-Violent Conflicts in Pakistan

The immediate health cost of violent armed conflict is in the form of deaths and injuries of the combatants as well as civilians. However, these costs are mostly pertinent to major violent internal and international conflicts. Minor violent armed conflicts and nonviolent/latent conflicts do not have as much capacity to kill and injure. However, these conflicts do have the capacity to affect human health in the long run through some less obvious channels. Diversion of resources from health sector to military and changes in the priorities of state and its institutions severely restrict the state’s capacity and willingness to provide health facilities and the people’s capacity to avail these facilities. In this study, the effect of Pakistan’s internal conflict and Pakistan-India conflict on the health of people in Pakistan is analyzed during 1972-2004. Pakistan’s internal conflict and the conflict with India during 1972-2004 are minor violent and non-violent/latent conflicts and it is more probable that these conflicts may affect people’s health through these less obvious channels instead of killings and destruction

BETWEEN GOOD INTENTIONS AND DARK CORNERS: EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP AND UNETHICAL PRO-ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Employees who are keen to uphold their organizational competetiveness by practicing organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) may, at some point within practical workplace settings, based on their social exchange perceptions (SEP), cross the ethical and moral boundary conditions to benefit the organization and engage in unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB). Drawing on social exchange theory (SET), and social cognitive theory (SCT), a mediated-moderation model has been theorized to broaden our take on UPB as one of the possible downstream effects of OCB, mediated by SEP and moderated by moral attentiveness (MA). As a novel study of its kind, it is likely to have a significant contribution to the body of knowledge regarding the paradoxical nature of UPB

IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT: A CASE STUDY OF COMMUNICATION & WORKS DEPARTMENT PESHAWAR.

Project management is a growing concept in public and private organizations of Pakistan. There are many obstacles in way of a successful project completion. The problem of Communication is of great importance in project management. A qualitative investigation was used to explore the importance of communication in project management. The interviews were conducted to explore the phenomena of communication among the ten project team members of Communications & Work department Peshawar. The data were collected and analyzed. The results shows that communication plays an important role in project management. Communication combines and coordinates different areas of project management phases. The findings of the study also illustrate that the communication skills of project managers and team members has a great impact on the project completion and its succes

IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT: A CASE STUDY OF COMMUNICATION & WORKS DEPARTMENT PESHAWAR.

Project management is a growing concept in public and private organizations of Pakistan. There are many obstacles in way of a successful project completion. The problem of Communication is of great importance in project management. A qualitative investigation was used to explore the importance of communication in project management. The interviews were conducted to explore the phenomena of communication among the ten project team members of Communications & Work department Peshawar. The data were collected and analyzed. The results shows that communication plays an important role in project management. Communication combines and coordinates different areas of project management phases. The findings of the study also illustrate that the communication skills of project managers and team members has a great impact on the project completion and its succes

Preoperative Anemia as a Negative Risk Factor for Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting Surgery: A Retrospective Study

OBJECTIVES The objective of this study is to check the effects of Anemia on mortality and morbidity in patients having ischemic heart disease and undergoing coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG). METHODOLOGY The study involved all the patients who underwent isolated coronary artery bypass graft surgery from July 2019 to December 2022. The clinical data of patients was retrospectively collected from the departmental data pool and was then analyzed using the chi-square test and t-test. A p-value of less than 0.05 was considered significant. RESULTSThe study included 2570 patients who underwent isolated CABG; 78.2% of patients were males with a mean age of 57.87±9.20. Hypertension was the most common comorbidity (68.9%), followed by dyslipidemia (53.7%) & Diabetes mellitus (49.9%). The preoperative mean hematocrit was 30.05±17.85. Of these 2570 patients, 52.37% were anaemic with a mean age of 58.69±9.05. Anemic patients had a significantly higher rate of IABP insertion (P 0.02) and intra-operative blood product transfusion (P <0.001). Anemic patients had a significantly higher incidence of in-hospital mortality (P 0.04) and a higher rate of postoperative blood product transfusion (P <0.001). There is no significant difference in terms of prolonged ventilation, reintubation, or readmission to ICU; however, nonanemic patients have a significantly higher rate of re-opening for bleeding/ tamponade (P 0.01). CONCLUSION Preoperative anaemia increases the mortality and morbidity in ischemic heart disease patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting. To improve the outcomes in CABG surgery, preoperative anaemia should be thoroughly investigated and treated to improve the outcomes of surgery

Temporal and Spatial Variations in Human Development Across the Districts of Punjab, Pakistan

The present study attempts to look into the temporal and spatial variations in human development across the districts of Punjab. The spatial variations in human development have been shown by calculating a district level Human Development Index (HDI) in Punjab for the year 2014. The temporal variation in human development for the districts of Punjab has been shown by comparing the HDI calculated in this paper with the HDI calculated for the same districts by Jamal and Khan (2007). However, the present work tries to correct some of the methodological issues in the work done by UNDP (2003) and Jamal and Khan (2007). Due to data constraints at the district level, UNDP (2003) and Jamal and Khan (2007) used health outcomes at the provincial level to calculate district health index in Pakistan. Similarly, they constructed income and education index by using some weak proxies. Income index was calculated by assuming equal share of services in gross domestic product (GDP) for all districts. For education index they considered adult literacy rate. Present study has used district level child survival rate for health index. Per capita income and mean years of schooling have been used for calculating for income and education index. The availability of data on child survival rate, income and mean years of schooling has been made possible by the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS, 2014) conducted by the Punjab Bureau of Statistics with the collaboration of UNDP and UNICEF. The results confirm the common perception of regional disparities in Punjab. Moreover, the temporal comparison of HDI points towards the widening of development gap between the regions of Punjab