Evidence on Allocative Efficiency and Elasticities of Substitution in the Manufacturing Sector of Pakistan

This study investigates the nature of allocative inefficiencies in large scale manufacturing sector of Pakistan over the period of 1969-70 to 1990-91. The study employ translog cost function to examine allocative inefficiency with capital labor and raw material as inputs. We estimate translog cost function along with share equations for manufacturing sector as a whole. The analysis here after performed with and without distortion parameters. The relative price efficiency between each pair of inputs provide the evidence at aggregate level that raw material is over used as compared to labor, while other inputs are equally efficiently utilized. It turns out labor is most responsive factor to change in factor price. Study suggests that long run economic growth could be achieved through adjustment policies that correct input market distortions.

External scale economies in manufacturing sector of Pakistan: a comparison of large scale manufacturing sector of Sindh and Punjab

This study investigates the external economies of scale in the manufacturing sector of Pakistan. The Return to scale is a property of the production function that indicates the relationship between proportionate change, in all inputs and resulting change in output. Returns to scale are applicable only in the long run, since all inputs are being changed. The estimated value of the coefficient of returns to scale at aggregate level is 1.017. It means that one percentage point change in all input quantities results in 1.017 percent change in output. It turns out that manufacturing sector of Pakistan is characterized by almost constant returns to scale at aggregates and disaggregate level.Economies of Scale; Distortion; Efficiency; Pakistan;

Priority Control in ATM Network for Multimedia Services

The communication network of the near future is going to be based on Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) which has widely been accepted by equipment vendors and service providers. Statistical multiplexing technique, high transmission speed and multimedia services render traditional approaches to network protocol and control ineffective. The ATM technology is tailored to support data, voice and video traffic using a common 53 byte fixed length cell based format with connection oriented routing. Traffic sources in A TM network such as coded video and bulk data transfer are bursty. These sources generate cells at a near-peak rate during their active period and generate few cells during relatively long inactive period. Severe network congestion might occur as a consequence of this dynamic nature of bursty traffic. Even though Call Admission Control (CAC) is appropriately carried out for deciding acceptance of a new call, Quality of Service (QOS) may be beyond the requirement limits as bursty traffic are piled up. So, priority control, in which traffic stream are classified into several classes according to their QOS requirements and transferred according to their priorities, becomes an important research issue in ATM network. There are basically two kinds of priority management schemes: time priority scheme that gives higher priority to services requiring short delay time and the space priority scheme that gives high priority cells requiring small cell loss ratio. The possible drawbacks of these time and space priority schemes are the processing overhead required for monitoring cells for priority change, especially in the case of time priority schemes. Also, each arriving cell needs to be time stamped. The drawback of the space priority scheme lies in the fact that buffer management complexity increases when the buffer size becomes large because cell sequence preservation requires a more complicated buffer management logic. In this thesis, a Mixed Priority Queueing or MPQ scheme is proposed which includes three distinct strategies for priority control method -- buffer partitioning, allocation of cells into the buffer and service discipline. The MPQ scheme is, by nature, a non-fixed priority method in which delay times and loss probabilities of each service class are taken into account and both delay times and loss probabilities can be controlled with less dependency compared with the fixed priority method, where priority grant rule is fixed according to the service class, and the priority is always given to the highest class cell among cells existing in the buffer. The proposed priority control is executed independently at each switching node as a local buffer management. Buffer partitioning is applied to overcome the weakness of the single buffer

Board of Director Characteristics and Earnings Management in Malaysia

This paper seeks to study the relation betweenboard of director characteristics as a corporategovernance mechanism and earnings management inthe Malaysian scenario. Earnings management ismeasured by discretionary accruals and for estimatingdiscretionary accruals, Modified Jones Model is used.Board of directors’ characteristics includes number ofmeetings, existence of outside directors, financialexpertise and separation of the roles of chair and chiefexecutive officer. In this study, the multiple linearregressions have been used. To test the hypothesis,cross-sectional and pooled data of 71 companies listedin Bursa Malaysia from 2001 to 2005 were used. Theresults demonstrate that financial expertise arepositively related to earnings management in theMalaysian scenario

Pharmacokinetics of paracetamol (Perfalgan®) following different infusion protocols in a porcine model

Introduction: Perfalgan® is a newly developed; direct inject able form of paracetamol. The recommended infusion rate for Perfalgan® is 1g over 15 minutes. This recommendation is based on the rationale that paracetamol acts centrally and to achieve an efficacious cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) level of paracetamol a high gradient between plasma and liquor is essential. Aim of the trial: Aim of the present investigation was to evaluate, whether similar efficacious CSF levels of Perfalgan® could be obtained after an infusion rate of 1g over 60 minutes. Methods: Experiments were performed in 10 anaesthetized female German domestic pigs. The pigs were randomized either in the group with an infusion rate of 15 minutes (n=5) or 60 minutes (n=5). In the 15-minutes-group plasma and CSF samples were taken 15, 30, 60, 90 120, 150, 180, and 210 minutes after starting the infusion. In the 60-minutes-group plasma samples were taken 60 minutes after starting the infusion and every 30 minutes up to 210 minutes. CSF samples were obtained after 90, 120, 150, 180, and 210 minutes. Results: There were no differences between the groups regarding age (15-min-group: 11 - 13 weeks; 60-min-group: 11 - 14 weeks) and body weight (15-min-group: 38.8 – 41.7 kg; 60-min-group: 38.5 – 41.9 kg). The elimination half-life (t ½ beta) of the drug was found to be longer in 60-minutes-group [(median±SD) 176± 127.62min] as compared to that in 15-min-group [120± 28.72 min]. The clearance (Cl) was lower in the 60-min-group [(median±SD) 94.9±45.73 ml/l)] as compared to that in the15-min-group [181±67 ml/l]. The values of maximum plasma concentration (C max) were (median±SD) 35.1± 17.48 in the 15-min-group and 37± 7.42 mg/l in the 60-min-group. The volumes of distribution at steady state (Vss) were (median+/-SD) 31.5±8.46 l in 15-min-group and 25.2±8.18 l in the 60-min-group. Our results indicate that plasma levels are higher in the 60-minutes-group as compared to that in 15-minutes-group in the time interval between 60 and 180 minutes after starting the infusion. In the time interval between 90 and 210 minutes CSF levels were similar in both groups. Conclusion: The intravenous infusion of 1g paracetamol over a period of 60 minutes instead of recommended duration of 15 minutes results in higher plasma and similar CSF concentrations. Pharmacokinetics suggests that, the analgesic effect of paracetamol for an infusion over 60 minutes is superior to the recommended infusion over 15 minutes. The infusion protocol for patients´ treatment should be scrutinized in randomized clinical tria

Forecasting of Pakistan's Net Electricity Energy Consumption on the Basis of Energy Pathway Scenarios

AbstractPower Sector pathways for Pakistan is developed in this paper to depict the future challenges & aspects associated with its forecasting and planning on basis of modeling tools. Major pathways will be taken for further study in predicting focus on energy source for power generation. Three scenarios (BAU, NC & GF) will be discussed over a 20 years period (2011 to 2030) and the results from these scenarios will highlight our focus on fossil fuels or either renewable for future endeavors. The result will provide the forecasting of power sector up to 2030 on basis of electric consumers growth, level of activities, final energy intensity, forecasted growth & other factors. Therefore, the overall result will indicate efficient factors for future evaluation of policies on energy planning. The result also provides the vision for other developing countries in the region to make strategy for renewable energy expansion on massive scale

Non-Coherent Cooperative Communications Dispensing with Channel Estimation Relying on Erasure Insertion Aided Reed-Solomon Coded SFH M-ary FSK Subjected to Partial-Band Interference and Rayleigh Fading

The rationale of our design is that although much of the literature of cooperative systems assumes perfect coherent detection, the assumption of having any channel estimates at the relays imposes an unreasonable burden on the relay station. Hence, non-coherently detected Reed-Solomon (ReS) coded Slow Frequency Hopping (SFH) assisted M -ary Frequency Shift Keying (FSK) is proposed for cooperative wireless networks, subjected to both partial-band interference and Rayleigh fading. Erasure insertion (EI) assisted ReS decoding based on the joint maximum output-ratio threshold test (MO-RTT) is investigated in order to evaluate the attainable system performance. Compared to the conventional error-correction-only decoder, the EI scheme may achieve an Eb/N0 gain of approximately 3dB at the Codeword Error Probability, Pw , of 10-4 , when employing the ReS (31, 20) code combined with 32-FSK modulation. Additionally, we evaluated the system’s performance, when either equal gain combining (EGC) or selection combining (SC) techniques are employed at the destination’s receiver. The results demonstrated that in the presence of one and two assisting relays, the EGC scheme achieves gains of 1.5 dB and 1.0 dB at the Pw of 10-6 , respectively, compared to the SC arrangement. Furthermore, we demonstrated that for the same coding rate and packet size, the ReS (31, 20) code using EI decoding is capable of outperforming convolutional coding, when 32-FSK modulation is considered, whilst LDPC coding had an edge over the above two schemes

Evidence on Allocative Efficiency and Elasticities of Substitution in the Manufacturing Sector of Pakistan

Lack of effective competition in factor markets often produces allocative or price inefficiencies in the manufacturing sector of developing countries like Pakistan. Such inefficiencies are common due to distortion in factor markets leading to the use of inappropriate factor proportions Lau and Yotopoulos (1971, 1972), Yotopoulos and Lau (1973), Burki, et al. (1997), Khan (1998), Ahmed (1999), Zafar (2000). Pakistan is also one of the country where labour is abundant but capital and raw material are scarce. Our finding undermine estimates of elasticities of demand and substitution based on classical assumption that factor markets are perfectly competitive i.e. Kazi, et al. (1976), Kemal (1981), Battese and Malik (1987, 1988, 1993), Malik, et al. (1989), Mahmood (1989, 1992), Zahid, et al. (1992) and Khan and Rafiq (1993). In order to discuss the cost structure of the manufacturing sector we will estimate well behaved translog cost function