K. G. Karmakar. Rural Credit and Self-help Groups—Micro-finance Needs and Concepts in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999. 374 pages. Hardbound. India Rs 465.00.

Inadequacy of capital results in inefficient utilisation of resources in the rural areas. It does not only impact negatively on national economic growth but also proves to be instrumental in keeping the poor trapped in poverty as formalised traditional capital markets remain beyond the reach of the poor. In such cases, then, micro-financing services offer the best solution to the aforementioned problem. It is encouraging to note that micro-financing is being recognised as a powerful tool in alleviating poverty and promoting growth and development at the grassroots level

Suresh Chandra Babu and Ashok Gulati. Economic Reforms and Food Security: The Impact of Trade and Technology in South Asia. New York: Food Products Press, 2005. 483 pages. Price not given.

This book covers a wide range of issues relating to food security (in order of hierarchy) including the globalisation and liberalisation of trade, the WTO Agreement on Agriculture and Intellectual Property Rights, market reforms, technological options, diversification and research needs, water security, and household food security. Further, recommendations are made to cope with challenges of food insecurity. The authors emphasise the need of continuity of the current trend of reforms and devising new policies for the agricultural, food, and natural resources sectors. The issues of poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition are being faced across South Asia. These are important not only on economic grounds but also on ethical grounds. The volume’s twenty one chapters, divided into seven parts, have been contributed by twenty-nine experts. Part I discusses economic reforms, trade, technology, and food security. The authors analyse food security situation in the region in the longrun perspective and discuss policy imperatives to cope with this challenge. Among the recommendations, are the need for investment in human resources, improvement in rural infrastructure, development of pro-poor technologies, and promotion of regional cooperation

Shirley A. White et al. The Art of Facilitating Participation: Realising the Power of Grassroots Communication. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999. Indian Rs 250.00. 367 pages.

Participatory development has gained considerable recognition and popularity in recent years as conventional approaches have been unable to tackle the widening disparities between scarce resources and endless needs and shorten the rich-poor gap. Their failure is traced to lack of participation of the beneficiaries. Shirley A. White, the editor of this volume, has used contributions from a number of authors who describe their experience in facilitating participation through its major components. The book is divided into three parts: the Art of Activation, the Art of Technique, and the Art of Building Community. The experiences of the authors are in a variety of areas—from facilitation to synergising participation, from catalyst communication to participatory rural communication appraisal, from participatory research to the participatory action research, from participatory rural appraisal to participatory learning, from the use of statistics in participatory development to use of the Internet and community radio in rural development, from role of women in agriculture to children in participatory research and so on. The book also tells a number of success and failure stories across the continents under world organisations like the USAID, UNDP, FAO, UNICEF, WHO, UNESCO, SIDA and others

Skill Shortage versus Subject Choice, Case of Pakistan

Higher Education is believed to be a very important determinant of economic growth. The growth can be optimized with a suitable combination of skills in various subjects. A mismatch between required combination of skills and available combination of skills carries heavy costs for developing economies since import of skill from foreign is much more in expensive for such economies. We compare skill shortage in Pakistan with the subjects choice of students recently enrolled in institutes of higher learning. We found that there is a mismatch between skill shortage and the enrollment trend. We propose that the Government should regulate recruitment of students into various subjects in order to create greater harmony between national needs and students enrollment.Subject Choice, Skill Shortage, National Needs

Impact of Model Specification Decisions on Unit Root Tests

Performance of unit tests depends on several specification decisions prior to their application e.g., whether or not to include a deterministic trend. Since there is no standard procedure for making such decisions, therefore the practitioners routinely make several arbitrary specification decisions. In Monte Carlo studies, the design of DGP supports these decisions, but for real data, such specification decisions are often unjustifiable and sometimes incompatible with data. We argue that the problems posed by choice of initial specification are quite complex and the existing voluminous literature on this issue treats only certain superficial aspects of this choice. We also show how these initial specifications affect the performance of unit root tests and argue that Monte Carlo studies should include these preliminary decisions to arrive at a better yardstick for evaluating such tests

Impact of Hydropower Projects on Economic Growth of AJK.

According to official estimates, territory of Azad Jammu & Kashmir has a potential to generate about 4600 MW of hydroelectricity, the cheapest source of energy. Total deficit in energy Pakistan is facing these days is about 5000 MW. So, only AJK can fulfill more than 90% of deficit of now demanded energy for entire country. Beside this direct and explicit advantage of hydropower projects to power sector, these projects may be extremely useful in improving many economic and social indicators at local and national level. Many socioeconomic indicators reveal that Azad Kashmir is there is huge gap in development level of AJK and National level. Development of power sector is extremely important to fill this gap. In this paper, we analyze effect of possible implementation of these projects on various economic and social sectors at local and national level. We discuss the obstacles in implementation of projects and recommendations are given at the end

Most Stringent Test for Location Parameter of a Random Number from Cauchy Density

We study the test for location parameter of a random number from Cauchy density, focusing on point optimal tests. We develop analytical technique to compute critical values and power curve of a point optimal test. We study the power properties of various point optimal tests. The problem turned out to be different in its nature, in that, the critical value of a test determines the power properties of test. We found that if for given size α and any point θm in alternative space, if the critical value of a point optimal test is 1, the test optimal for that point is the most stringent test