The Twin Deficits Phenomenon: Evidence from Pakistan

Like most developing countries a steady budget deficit in Pakistan is the primary cause of all major ills of the economy. It has varied between 5.4 to 8.7 percent during last two decades. On the other hand the current account deficit varied between 2.7 to 7.2 percent during the same period. The variations in fiscal policy can lead to predictable developments in an open economy’s performance on current account, remains a controversial issue. An important aspect of this issue concerns what is termed as twin deficit analysis, according to which fiscal deficits and current account balances are very closely related so that reductions in the former are both necessary and sufficient to obtain improved performance in the later. Theoretical work on the relationship that exist between variations in fiscal policy and the current account balance has been based upon two types of models. These models are constructed from postulated behavioural relationships that purport to describe how the economy works in aggregate without explaining the behaviour of agents who make up the economy.

The Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Pakistan

The paper empirically identifies the determinants of growth in foreign direct investment (FDI) in Pakistan over the period 1961–2003. Our main interest is to study how different variables or indicators reflecting the trade, fiscal, and financial sector liberalisation attract FDI in Pakistan. The study uses the cointegration and error-correction techniques to identify the variables in explaining the FDI in Pakistan. The study considers the tariff rate, exchange rate, tax rate, credit to private sector, and index of general share price variables to see if they may explain the inflow of foreign direct investment. Also included are wages and per capita GDP to test for the relative demand for labour and market size hypotheses. All variables indicate correct signs and are statistically significant except for wage rate and share price index. The study clearly emphasises the role of these policy variables in attracting FDI and determining its growth in both short- and long-run in Pakistan, and also indicates a positive and significant impact of reforms on FDI in Pakistan.Foreign Investment, Pakistan

The Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Pakistan

The significance of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows is well documented in literature for both the developing and developed countries. Over the last decade foreign direct investment have grown at least twice as rapidly as trade Meyer, (2003). As there is shortage of capital in the developing countries, which need capital for their development process, the marginal productivity of capital is higher in these countries. On the other hand investors in the developed world seek high returns for their capital. Hence there is a mutual benefit in the international movement of capital

The Twin Deficits Phenomenon: Evidence from Pakistan

Like most developing countries a steady budget deficit in Pakistan is the primary cause of all major ills of the economy. It has varied between 5.4 to 8.7 percent during last two decades. On the other hand the current account deficit varied between 2.7 to 7.2 percent during the same period. The variations in fiscal policy can lead to predictable developments in an open economy’s performance on current account, remains a controversial issue. An important aspect of this issue concerns what is termed as twin deficit analysis, according to which fiscal deficits and current account balances are very closely related so that reductions in the former are both necessary and sufficient to obtain improved performance in the later. Theoretical work on the relationship that exist between variations in fiscal policy and the current account balance has been based upon two types of models. These models are constructed from postulated behavioural relationships that purport to describe how the economy works in aggregate without explaining the behaviour of agents who make up the economy [Mundel (1963); Branson (1976); Dornbusch (1976); Kawai (1985) and Marston (1985)]. The second type of model, derives the important macroeconomic relationships from the microfoundations of individual optimising behaviour [Dixit (1978); Neary (1980); Obstfeld (1981); Persson (1982); Kimbrough (1985); Frenkel and Razin (1986); Cuddington and Vinals (1985, 1986a) and Moore (1989)]. However, both of these approaches have yielded divergent results

Analysis and Survey of FPGA Based PROFIBUS Board

Fieldbus system has been established as a communication network, used to connect field devices such as sensors, transduser,controller,man machine interface.Currently a large number of global fieldbus standards are available for consumers.Citation of different types of field bus present an analytical review of various fieldbus systemthat how to gather the data from various equipment distributed far away from each other in the field with reduced wiring and cabling requirement, those are the basic components of communication system. This work also discuss about FPGA based PROFIBUS communication board. It proposes the alternative solution to complexity of communication system and devise it more reliable, high integral and transmission efficient

ETHNOMEDICINAL, PHYTOCHEMICAL AND PHARMACOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF FLACOURTIA JANGOMAS: A REVIEW

Flacourtia jangomas (Lour.) Raeusch., a small tree of Willow family distributed throughout tropical regions of East Africa and Asia is well-known for its culinary and medicinal uses. The plant has received increasing interest due to its limonoid constituents. Phytochemical studies have led to the isolation and characterization of an array of bioactive compounds and pharmacological investigations have validated the traditional uses of the species as well as discovered some new bioefficacies. The aim of the review is to present an updated and comprehensive overview of traditional uses, ethnomedicinal significance, phytochemical and pharmacological aspects of F. jangomas to highlight its ethnopharmacological use and to explore its therapeutic potentials thereby providing a basis for future research. Relevant information and literature on F. jangomas from electronic databases such as Academic Journals, Google, Google Scholar, PubMed, Web of Science, and Science Direct were consulted and analyzed. Available literatures evidently demonstrate that F. jangomas possess a wide spectrum of pharmacological activities that could be explained by the presence of varied range of chemical constituents. Phytochemical and pharmacological investigations showed that extracts of different parts and major active components of F. jangomas had antimicrobial, analgesic, antidiabetic, antidiarrheal, antioxidant and cytotoxic activities. This emphasizes the need for further investigation to explore more bioactive chemical constituents and new bioefficacies of the plant and to establish a credible relationship between molecular structure and activity of compounds

Implementation and Evaluation of Augmented Reality Technology in Chemistry for Secondary Education in Bangladesh: A Case Study

There is a dearth of study on the effects and consequences of augmented reality in the field of education, and research on augmented reality (AR) technologies is still in its early stages. A user can check virtual objects superimposed on live video of this display reality via visual following or plan rendering in mobile augmented reality. While there have been a number of studies on AR, the ways in which these studies define AR and the circumstances in which they apply AR differ significantly. The textbooks in our country are not well organized and brings monotony while studying the chapters. Augmented Reality technology can solve this problem. We have seen in various articles that this technology is being used successfully. The study has been conducted to establish an effective system for making the education process easier. The purpose is to ensure that students can learn chemistry by not only memorizing but by understanding the concepts for which Augmented Reality has been used. Augmented Reality will help to get 3D vision of the concepts of chemistry. From the system established, students will be able to learn the difficult concepts easily and can enhance their knowledge which will help to build a better understanding of the concepts of chemistry

Multi-Sensor Preprocessing for Traffic Light Detection

With the exponential growth of smartphone usage and its computational capability, there is an opportunity today to build a usable navigation system for the visually impaired. A smartphone contains virtually all sensors for sensing the surrounding environment such as GPS, cameras, and inertial sensors. However, there are many challenges for building a complete navigation system, such as low-level methods of environment sensing, accuracy, and efficient data processing. In this dissertation, we address some of these challenges and present a system for traffic light detection, which is fundamental for pedestrian navigation by the visually impaired in outdoors. In this system, we analyze the video feed from a smartphone’s camera using model-based computer vision techniques to detect traffic lights. Specifically, we utilize both color and shape information as they are the most prominent features of the traffic lights. Additionally, we use the inertial sensors of a smartphone to compute the 3D orientation of a smartphone to predict a subpart of a video frame, which is highly probable to contain the traffic lights. By processing only that subpart, we improve the computational time by an order of magnitude on average. Furthermore, due to the processing of a subpart instead of the whole video frame, our system achieves higher accuracy because of reduced false positive. Finally, we recognize walk and stop signs for pedestrians in addition to the regular traffic lights to obtain higher confidence during navigation. We evaluated this system in various lighting conditions such as cloudy, sunny, and at night, and achieved over 95% accuracy in the traffic light and sign detection and recognition

Development and Physicochemical Characterization of Modified Polymeric Surfaces for Bacterial Adhesion

Radiation-induced graft polymerization was used to modify the surfaces of polypropylene (PP) sheets for bacterial adhesion. For the experiments, two monomers were mixed: the quaternary ammonium salt (QAS) [2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl]trimethylammonium chloride and acrylic acid (AAc). The PP sheets were activated by electron-beam radiation before the grafting reaction. Different AAc/QAS comonomer mixture ratios (50 : 10, 40 : 20, 30 : 30, 20 : 40, and 10 : 50) were used to determine the degree of grafting and to make the PP surfaces hydrophilic. The graft level increased with an increase in the percentage of AAc in the comonomer mixtures. Synergism was investigated during graft polymerization to quantify the poly(acrylic acid) and poly{[2-(methacryloyloxy) ethyl] trimethylammonium chloride} graft fractions in the resulting graft copolymers. An approximation of the graft fractions was made with an analytical technique based on acid-base volumetric titration. The wettability of the modified surfaces was determined by the measurement of the water contact angles. The surfaces prepared with higher percentages of QAS in the comonomer mixtures had lower contact angles than those prepared with lower percentages of QAS. The presence of oxygen and nitrogen on the modified PP surfaces was investigated with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Structural changes in unmodified and modified PP were characterized with differential scanning calorimetry. (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 119: 1307-1315, 201