A Fresh Assessment of the Underground Economy and Tax Evasion in Pakistan: Causes, Consequences, and Linkages with the Formal Economy

Rise in the underground economy creates problems for the policy-makers to formulate economic policies, especially the monetary and fiscal policies. It is found that if there was no tax evasion, budgets balance might have been zero and positive for some years and we would not have needed to borrow as much as we had borrowed. It is concluded that the impact of the underground economy is significant to the movements of the formal economy, but the impact of formal economy is insignificant in explaining the movements in the underground economy. In the long run, underground economy and official economy are positively associated. It is estimated that the underground economy ranges between Rs 2.91 trillion and Rs 3.34 trillion (54.6 percent of GDP to 62.8 percent of GDP respectively) in 2005 and tax evasion ranges between Rs 302 billion and Rs 347 billion (5.7 percent of GDP to 6.5 percent of GDP respectively) in 2005. Underground economy and tax evasion were increasing very rapidly in the early 1980s but the rate of increase accelerated in the 1990s. It declined in 1999, but reverted to an increasing trend until 2003. It declined again in 2004 and 2005Underground Economy, Tax Evasion

Fresh Assessment of the Underground Economy and Tax Evasion in Pakistan: Causes, Consequences, and Linkages with the Formal Economy

Rise in the underground economy creates problems for the policy-makers to formulate economic policies, especially the monetary and fiscal policies. It is found that if there was no tax evasion, budgets balance might have been zero and positive for some years and we would not have needed to borrow as much as we had borrowed. It is concluded that the impact of the underground economy is significant to the movements of the formal economy, but the impact of formal economy is insignificant in explaining the movements in the underground economy. In the long run, underground economy and official economy are positively associated. It is estimated that the underground economy ranges between Rs 2.91 trillion and Rs 3.34 trillion (54.6 percent of GDP to 62.8 percent of GDP respectively) in 2005 and tax evasion ranges between Rs 302 billion and Rs 347 billion (5.7 percent of GDP to 6.5 percent of GDP respectively) in 2005. Underground economy and tax evasion were increasing very rapidly in the early 1980s but the rate of increase accelerated in the 1990s. It declined in 1999, but reverted to an increasing trend until 2003. It declined again in 2004 and 2005.Underground Economy; Tax Evasion

Is Inflation in Pakistan a Monetary Phenomenon?

The paper finds that an increase in money supply over the long-run results in a higher rate of inflation and thus provides support for the quantity theory of money. It establishes that inflation is essentially a monetary phenomenon. However, the money supply does not instantly influence the price levels; the impact of money supply on inflation has a considerable lag of about 9 months. While the study shows that the money supply works through the system in less than a year, it also points out that the system takes rather long to converge to equilibrium if shocks appear in any of the three variables, viz., GDP, money supply, and prices.Growth, Inflation, Money Supply, QTM

A Fresh Assessment of the Underground Economy and Tax Evasion in Pakistan : Causes, Consequences, and Linkages with the Formal Economy

Rise in the underground economy creates problems for the policy-makers to formulate economic policies, especially the monetary and fiscal policies. It is found that if there was no tax evasion, budgets balance might have been zero and positive for some years and we would not have needed to borrow as much as we had borrowed. It is concluded that the impact of the underground economy is significant to the movements of the formal economy, but the impact of formal economy is insignificant in explaining the movements in the underground economy. In the long run, underground economy and official economy are positively associated. It is estimated that the underground economy ranges between Rs 2.91 trillion and Rs 3.34 trillion (54.6 percent of GDP to 62.8 percent of GDP respectively) in 2005 and tax evasion ranges between Rs 302 billion and Rs 347 billion (5.7 percent of GDP to 6.5 percent of GDP respectively) in 2005. Underground economy and tax evasion were increasing very rapidly in the early 1980s but the rate of increase accelerated in the 1990s. It declined in 1999, but reverted to an increasing trend until 2003. It declined again in 2004 and 2005.Underground economy, Tax Evasion

An infrastructure for Turkish prosody generation in text-to-speech synthesis

Text-to-speech engines benefit from natural language processing while generating the appropriate prosody. In this study, we investigate the natural language processing infrastructure for Turkish prosody generation in three steps as pronunciation disambiguation, phonological phrase detection and intonation level assignment. We focus on phrase boundary detection and intonation assignment. We propose a phonological phrase detection scheme based on syntactic analysis for Turkish and assign one of three intonation levels to words in detected phrases. Empirical observations on 100 sentences show that the proposed scheme works with approximately 85% accuracy

Latina/o Conversion and Miracle-Seeking at a Buddhist Temple

The growing diversification of the US Latino religious’ experiences calls for scholarly attention beyond Protestant or Catholic categories. This study begins to answer this call. Using interview data with 26 Latinos collected over 2 years of observation at the True Lama Meditation Center (TLMC) in Houston, Texas, we describe how Latinos who convert to Buddhism or actively attend the temple while also continuing to attend Christian services (both Catholic and Protestant) see themselves and understand their religious identities and practices. We then explore the reasons for their conversion or changes in religious identities and practices through various theoretical lens. Although the majority of respondents now claim to be Buddhist, many did not switch religions but augmented or extended their religious identities and practices. Reasons for conversion to Buddhism or concurrent involvement at the temple and Buddhist faith practices include seeking material support and miracles and those seeking spiritual fulfillment they felt they were not getting in Christian faith practices

Noise characteristics of passive components for phased array applications

The results of a comparative study on noise characteristics of basic power combining/dividing and phase shifting schemes are presented. The theoretical basics of thermal noise in a passive linear multiport are discussed. A new formalism is presented to describe the noise behavior of the passive circuits, and it is shown that the fundamental results are conveniently achieved using this description. The results of analyses concerning the noise behavior of basic power combining/dividing structures (the Wilkinson combiner, 90 deg hybrid coupler, hybrid ring coupler, and the Lange coupler) are presented. Three types of PIN-diode switch phase shifters are analyzed in terms of noise performance

Impact of Export Subsidies on Pakistan’s Exports

Throughout Pakistan’s history, policy has sought to promote exports through government support and incentives. The government machinery is geared to export promotion especially through direct and indirect subsidies. Surprisingly, these policies have been continued without serious examination. This paper makes a first attempt to evaluate these policies by estimating the impact of two such schemes—export financing and rebate/refund schemes—on export performance. Our analysis shows that, over the long run, the export financing scheme had a negative effect on exports while the rebate/refund scheme affected exports insignificantly. Subsidy schemes clearly do not seem to work, yet they have been retained for many years.Rebate, Duty Drawback, Export Financing, Exports, Trade, Exchange Rate, Co-integration, Vector Error Correction, Pakistan