Labour Supply and Earning Functions of Educated Married Women: A Case Study of Northern Punjab

This study analyses labour supply of educated married women in Mandi Bahauddin, a typical district of northern Punjab in Pakistan. The study finds that the education level and economic compulsion are important factors affecting women s labour force participation decision. But, otherwise, they are independent in their decision-making, e.g., the women living in joint families or those with less educated husbands and/or parents are not socially constrained in terms of participation. Human capital variables like education, experience, and training, besides the nature of occupation and distance from the central city, are the important factors affecting women s earning rates, while the hours of work are mainly determined institutionally.Labour Force and Employment, Size, and Structure, Time Allocation and Labour Supply

An Empirical Analysis of Convergence Hypothesis

A useful contribution of wide ranging debate in the growth literature is that it has put forward a number of testable hypotheses. One of such hypotheses is known as the convergence hypothesis whereby it is postulated that in the long run developing countries would catch-up with the developed countries in terms of per capita income. Although the convergence hypothesis has gained researchers’ interest in recent times, the basic proposition was laid down in the neo-classical growth model of Solow (1956) and Swan (1956). Traditionally Solow-Swan model has been regarded as a theoretically consistent answer to Harrods’s (1939) twin problems of discrepancy between the warranted and natural rates of growth and instability in the growth process. Although Solow- Swan model is designed to study growth process within a single country, the concept of conditional convergence is far from being alien to the model; it in fact forms the core of argument in the attack on Harrod-Domar model [Harrod (1939) and Domar (1946)]. The model predicts that under perfect competition and in the absence of market distortions, an economy converges to equilibrium capital-labour ratio to yield steady state growth rate that is equal to the natural growth rate and is dynamically stable.

Capital Inflows and National Debt

Using a three-gap model, this paper simulates the future time paths of resource deficits in Pakistan. The paper then show that the policy of increasing the rate of return on foreign capital can reduce foreign debt when foreign capital is sufficiently responsive to changes in its rate of return. This, however, happens at the expense of increasing domestic debt. The policy of selling public assets abroad appears fruitless. The main benefit of this policy is a reduction in domestic debt which can better be achieved by selling public assets domestically

Combining Yearly and Quarterly Data in Regression Analysis

Data deficiency is often a problem in regression analysis. The problem, for example, may be due to non-availability of data on some variable, missing observations, lack of information due to multicollinearity and measurement errors, etc. Various approaches have been suggested to deal with the problem depending on its precise nature. One such problem we want to focus our attention on is the lack of time disaggregated data in time-series regression analysis. In particular, observations on some variables over a shorter time interval like a quarter may be limited in number while the corresponding observations over a longer time interval like a year are available for a long period of time The number of quarterly observations may not be sufficient to estimate the desired relationship with acceptable degrees of freedom. On the other hand, estimation with yearly data may require the use of a long time series going way back into the past. The estimates thus obtained may not capture the relationship prevailing at present or in the recent past and, therefore, mislead the researcher. In addition, the use of yearly data may also result in lack of degrees of freedom

A Simulation Analysis of the Debt Problem in Pakistan

The current debt situation in Pakistan and the resulting financial crisis require serious attempts to find a sustainable indigenous solution. As such it is essential to search ways and means to reduce dependence on external borrowing over medium to long run.1 External debt is usually created to sustain a growth rate of the economy, which is otherwise not feasible with the given state of domestic resources, technology, consumption propensity and economic management practices. However, the success of economic growth financed by external borrowing depends on two factors, namely the domestic saving rate and productivity. A country with lower saving rate needs to borrow more to finance a given rate of economic growth. In Pakistan the flow of external loans is likely to have adversely affected the compulsion for savings. For example, no serious attempts have been made to improve tax collection or to control non-development government expenditure unless forced by the donor agencies.

Test of Multi-moment Capital Asset Pricing Model: Evidence from Karachi Stock Exchange

This study examines the Capital Asset Pricing Model of Sharpe (1964) Lintner (1965) and Black (1972) as the benchmark model in the asset pricing theory. The empirical findings indicate that the Sharpe-Lintner-Black CAPM inadequately, particularly the explains Pakistan’s equity market economically and statistically significant role of market risk for the determination of expected returns. Instead of identifying more risk factors, a detailed analysis of a single risk factor is undertaken. We have concentrated on two main extensions of the standard CAPM model. First, the standard model is extended by taking higher moments into account. Second, the risk factors are allowed to vary over time in the autoregressive process. The result of unconditional non-linear generalisation of the standard model reveals that in the higher-moment CAPM model the investors are rewarded for co-skewness risk. However, the test provides marginal support for rewards of the co-kurtosis risk. Finally, the empirical usefulness of conditional higher moments in explaining the cross-section of asset return is investigated. The results indicate that the conditional co-skewness is an important determinant of asset pricing, and the asset pricing relationship varies through time. The conditional covariance and the conditional co-kurtosis explain the asset price relationship in a limited way. It is concluded that Kraus and Litzenberger (1976) attempts to develop a modified form of the Sharpe- Lintner-Black CAPM and is more successful with KSE data.Covariance, Co-skewness, Co-kurtosis, Non-normal Return Distribution, Capital Asset Pricing Model, Time-varying Moments.