Investment, Poverty and Growth Nexus in Pakistan: Empirical Evidence from ARDL Modeling Approach to Co-Integration

This study analyzes the nexus of investment, poverty and growth in Pakistan. It will develop comprehensive macro economic model of Pakistan economy with the desire of amplification and provided that a long-term result for the determined investment-poverty-growth discrepancy veterans. The significant level of investment and sustained economic growth may be the major driving forces for poverty decrease in Pakistan. The level of investment also assists the poor through a direct allocation influence as well as tortuous growth effect, in both the long run and short run. To detect the long term and short term effects of economic development, poverty and investment, an ARDL modeling approach to co- integration is functional, which is the suitable technique  in excess of method of integration after examining the stationary level of the data through ADF Test. The bound testing approach is exploited for cointegration to analyze the presence of long term association amid variables and ECM models are verbalized for short term analysis. The model is predictable with time-series data from 1972 to 2013 confine mutually the long-run and short-run forceful goods of the economy. The model is subjected to a sequence of strategy situation  that assesses a mixture of options for government to recover the prolific ability of the economy, thus attain continued hasten growth and a decrease in  Pakistan`s poverty. JEL Classification Codes: G12, G 1

Effect of Human Capital on Organization Performance: An Analysis from Service Sector of Punjab, Pakistan

In today’s fast changing environment, where globalization is taking place, competition is increasing day by day. So, it has become a challenge for organizations to remain competitive. In order to remain competitive, it has become necessary for organizations to find ways through which they can compete in competitive world. For this reason, human capital is such a resource that can provide organizations with competitive advantage as human capital resource cannot be easily copied or imitated. In order to find out the impact of human capital on organization performance, present study is carried out in service sector of Punjab, Pakistan. For this purpose data was collected from five major cities of Punjab, Pakistan. Respondents were faculty members of universities and officer grade employees of banking sector. Analysis showed that human capital does affect the career, job and life satisfaction of employees which are indicators of organization performance. Empirical analysis showed that human capital positively affects the career satisfaction as was shown by β = 0.500, and significant at p = 0.000. Same is case with human capital and job satisfaction as represented by β = 0.281, and significant at p = 0.000. Human Capital and life satisfaction was also found to be dependent as shown by β = 0.301, significant at p = 0.000

Effect of Human Capital on Organization Performance: An Analysis from Service Sector of Punjab, Pakistan

In today’s fast changing environment, where globalization is taking place, competition is increasing day by day. So, it has become a challenge for organizations to remain competitive. In order to remain competitive, it has become necessary for organizations to find ways through which they can compete in competitive world. For this reason, human capital is such a resource that can provide organizations with competitive advantage as human capital resource cannot be easily copied or imitated. In order to find out the impact of human capital on organization performance, present study is carried out in service sector of Punjab, Pakistan. For this purpose data was collected from five major cities of Punjab, Pakistan. Respondents were faculty members of universities and officer grade employees of banking sector. Analysis showed that human capital does affect the career, job and life satisfaction of employees which are indicators of organization performance. Empirical analysis showed that human capital positively affects the career satisfaction as was shown by β = 0.500, and significant at p = 0.000. Same is case with human capital and job satisfaction as represented by β = 0.281, and significant at p = 0.000. Human Capital and life satisfaction was also found to be dependent as shown by β = 0.301, significant at p = 0.000

The Impact of Crisis Response Strategies on Consumer Attitudes and Perceptions towards Halal Brands

Purpose – The purpose of the present study is to understand the impact of varying crisis response strategies on consumers’ attitudes and perceptions when used in a Halal crisis situation and also to study how different levels of consumer skepticism determines the magnitude of impact on consumer perceptions. Methodology – Data was collected from 171 Malaysian residents, particularly Muslims only, using snowball and convenience sampling. The data was later analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 20. Findings – The results show that while there exists a significant relation between high and low skepticism consumers towards only the accommodative response strategy while no significant relation exists between them, towards the defensive strategy. However, the high skepticism consumer groups show a more positive response towards the defensive strategy than the accommodative. Practical implications – Halal crisis managers should understand the significance of consumers with high levels of skepticism. It is crucial to keep them satisfied and to use Halal practices and crisis communications such that they do not become skeptical about their brand in the long run. A consumer with high level of religiosity may go into the search of extra information from several sources before it can make judgment regarding a Halal brand. Thus, to satisfy such consumers, Halal crisis managers really need to devise effective crisis response strategies that would make them evaluate their brand positively. Originality/Value – Despite there being a number of studies carried out in the field of crisis communications, barely any research exists on the use of crisis response strategies in Halal crisis situations and how consumer skepticism influences post-crisis consumer attitudes towards the Halal brands. The empirical evidence of this study will contribute to the literature on crisis communications

Association of Alexithymia, Loneliness and Psychological Distress among University Students

To explore the association between Alexithymia, loneliness, and psychological distress among university students. A total of 331 participants were taken from the different universities of Lahore, Punjab. The participants' ages ranged from 17 to 25 years old. The sample consisted of male (n=50.8%) and female  (n=49.8%) The sample was taken using a convenience sampling technique. The following measures were used to assess the findings: Demographic form, Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, and Loneliness Scale. Findings indicate that alexithymia had a strong positive correlation with psychological suffering and loneliness and loneliness was significantly positively correlated with psychological distress.  Furthermore, females exhibited higher levels of alexithymia, loneliness, and psychological suffering compared to males. It is concluded that lack of emotional insight and communication difficulties lead to challenges in forming and maintaining meaningful connections with others, resulting in feelings of loneliness

Malicious node detection using machine learning and distributed data storage using blockchain in WSNs

In the proposed work, blockchain is implemented on the Base Stations (BSs) and Cluster Heads (CHs) to register the nodes using their credentials and also to tackle various security issues. Moreover, a Machine Learning (ML) classifier, termed as Histogram Gradient Boost (HGB), is employed on the BSs to classify the nodes as malicious or legitimate. In case, the node is found to be malicious, its registration is revoked from the network. Whereas, if a node is found to be legitimate, then its data is stored in an Interplanetary File System (IPFS). IPFS stores the data in the form of chunks and generates hash for the data, which is then stored in blockchain. In addition, Verifiable Byzantine Fault Tolerance (VBFT) is used instead of Proof of Work (PoW) to perform consensus and validate transactions. Also, extensive simulations are performed using the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) dataset, referred as WSN-DS. The proposed model is evaluated both on the original dataset and the balanced dataset. Furthermore, HGB is compared with other existing classifiers, Adaptive Boost (AdaBoost), Gradient Boost (GB), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Extreme Gradient Boost (XGB) and ridge, using different performance metrics like accuracy, precision, recall, micro-F1 score and macro-F1 score. The performance evaluation of HGB shows that it outperforms GB, AdaBoost, LDA, XGB and Ridge by 2-4%, 8-10%, 12-14%, 3-5% and 14-16%, respectively. Moreover, the results with balanced dataset are better than those with original dataset. Also, VBFT performs 20-30% better than PoW. Overall, the proposed model performs efficiently in terms of malicious node detection and secure data storage. © 2013 IEEE

The nexus between Basel capital requirements, risktaking and profitability: what about emerging economies?

The study examines the nexus between Basel capital requirements, banking sector risk-taking, and profitability in Asian emerging markets by using dynamic panel GMM methodology. The findings of the study suggest that regulatory capital positively affects risk-taking which validates the “regulatory hypothesis.” The findings also reveal that regulatory capital positively while risk negatively affects the profitability in the banking sector. The current study finds the bidirectional causality between the regulatory capital and risk-taking, implying that banks with higher capital ratios are expected to increase in risk-taking and vice versa. The findings also suggest that managerial ownership positively affects while foreign ownership negatively impacts risk-taking consistent with the agency theory of corporate governance. The study proposes that ownership structure has a significant influence on bank risk and profitability, however, the combined impact of regulatory capital through its interaction with the ownership structure is not proved to be significan