Impact of Financial Liberalisation and Deregulation on Banking Sector in Pakistan

The study analyses market perception about the performance of Pakistani commercial banks due to financial liberalisation and deregulation measures taken by the central bank over the last two decades. For this purpose, it uses Survey approach. To augment the results of Survey Based Approach, it employs Distribution Free Approach to measure relative cost inefficiencies of commercial banks. Out of 35 commercial banks, 15 banks have been chosen for analysis purpose. Key banking reforms remain helpful in correcting flaws in the banking sector of Pakistan. In particular, privatisation of banks, the deregulation and institutional strengthening measures and switching towards market-based monetary and credit management remain helpful in correcting the prevailing flaws. The cost inefficiency scores of banks also indicate that the efficiency of Pakistani banks have improved during 1990 to 2006. As regards group-wise efficiency estimates, foreign banks are found to be more efficient, followed by private banks, nationalised commercial banks, and privatised banks. The relative high cost inefficiency of privatised banks is most probably due to having remained under state owned structure during most of the period of the study. The financial liberalisation and the resultant competitive environment might be the key factors behind improvements in efficacy of banks.Banking, Efficiency, Regulations, Financial Reforms

Impact of Financial Liberalisation and Deregulation on Banking Sector in Pakistan

The study analyses market perception about the performance of Pakistani commercial banks due to financial liberalisation and deregulation measures taken by the central bank over the last two decades. For this purpose, it uses Survey approach. To augment the results of Survey Based Approach, it employs Distribution Free Approach to measure relative cost inefficiencies of commercial banks. Out of 35 commercial banks, 15 banks have been chosen for analysis purpose. Key banking reforms remain helpful in correcting flaws in the banking sector of Pakistan. In particular, privatisation of banks, the deregulation and institutional strengthening measures and switching towards market-based monetary and credit management remain helpful in correcting the prevailing flaws. The cost inefficiency scores of banks also indicate that the efficiency of Pakistani banks have improved during 1990 to 2006. As regards group-wise efficiency estimates, foreign banks are found to be more efficient, followed by private banks, nationalised commercial banks, and privatised banks. The relative high cost inefficiency of privatised banks is most probably due to having remained under state owned structure during most of the period of the study. The financial liberalisation and the resultant competitive environment might be the key factors behind improvements in efficacy of banks.Banking, Efficiency, Regulations, Financial Reforms

Transplantation of Crossed Fused Renal Ectopia

Crossed fused renal ectopia is a type of congenital fused anomaly of the kidney. This type of kidney, when encountered, can be used as a donor organ to provide useful solution to the critical shortage of available organs for transplantation

The Efficiency of Amalgamation and Cyanidation for the Extraction of Placer Gold Deposits of Indus River Basin along Gilgit to Thalachi (Gilgit-Baltistan)

Separation of gold from placers are not given importance in Pakistan, but in the economy of Gilgit-Baltistan,it plays a vital role. The study mainly focused on shaking table technique for the extraction of gold from placer depositsalong Gilgit river between Gilgit and Thalachi, near Gilgit and Astore river junction. For the separation of gold, fromthe concentration of shaking table the Hg; mercury amalgamation has been used for it. In the result of theamalgamation process recovered gold was 27.12%. The cyanidation process was used to separate from remains ofmercury amalgamation, tailing and middling of shaking table. The graphical results of gold extraction with bottle rollcyanidation and agitation method were compared. The results of gold separation using bottle roll cyanidation andagitation methods were about 87.5% and 29.8% respectively. It is clear from the results, the bottle roll cyanidation is abetter technique for the separation of fine gold from placers along with downstream waterway areas, where placerdeposits occur

An ethnomedicinal appraisal of the Kurram Agency, tribal area, Pakistan

631-647The present work was conducted at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in the agency of Kurram (33° 49' 07'' N and 70° 10' 24'' E), an administrative part of the late federally administered tribal area (FATA) of Pakistan. Aim of the study was to document the medicinal flora based on local information, i.e., local classification, part used, drug preparation and dosage. Ethnomedicinal data was obtained through semi structured interviews after obtaining the respondents prior informed consent. During field visits 72 people were interviewed 150 plant species belonging to 131 genera in 86 families were documented. The documented plants were found to be effective for 64 disorders, from simple to complicated health issues. In a quantitative analysis, 31 plant species showed fidelity level ranges from 33-100% and relative frequency of citation from 0.03 to 0.28. Conservation issues related to plant use need to be investigated

Recent Approaches of Forecasting and Optimal Economic Dispatch to Overcome Intermittency of Wind and Photovoltaic (PV) Systems:A Review

Renewable energy sources (RESs) are the replacement of fast depleting, environment polluting, costly, and unsustainable fossil fuels. RESs themselves have various issues such as variable supply towards the load during different periods, and mostly they are available at distant locations from load centers. This paper inspects forecasting techniques, employed to predict the RESs availability during different periods and considers the dispatch mechanisms for the supply, extracted from these resources. Firstly, we analyze the application of stochastic distributions especially the Weibull distribution (WD), for forecasting both wind and PV power potential, with and without incorporating neural networks (NN). Secondly, a review of the optimal economic dispatch (OED) of RES using particle swarm optimization (PSO) is presented. The reviewed techniques will be of great significance for system operators that require to gauge and pre-plan flexibility competence for their power systems to ensure practical and economical operation under high penetration of RESs

A bibliometric review of corporate environmental disclosure literature

Purpose The study aims to identify and discuss influential aspects of corporate environmental disclosure (CED) literature, including key streams, themes, authors, keywords, journals, affiliations and countries. This review also constructs agendas for future CED research. Design/methodology/approach Using a bibliometric review approach, the authors reviewed 560 articles on CED from 215 journals published between 1982 and 2020. Findings The authors' insights are three-fold. First, the authors identified three core streams of CED research: “legitimization of environmental hazards via environmental disclosures,” “the role of environmental accounting in achieving corporate environmental sustainability” and “integrating environmental social and governance (ESG) reporting into the global reporting initiatives (GRI) guidelines”. Second, the authors also deployed a thematic map that classifies CED research into four themes: niche themes (e.g. institutional theory and environmental management system), motor themes (e.g. stakeholder engagement), emerging/declining themes (e.g. legitimacy theory) and basic/transversal themes (e.g. voluntary CED, environmental reporting and corporate social responsibility). Third, the authors highlighted important CED authors, keywords, journals, articles, affiliations and countries. Research limitations/implications This study assists researchers, journal editors and consultants in the corporate sector to comprehensively understand various dimensions of CED research and practices and suggests potential emerging research areas. Although this paper appears to have been thoroughly conducted, using authors' keywords to identify themes was a key limitation. Thus, the authors call upon using a more comprehensive data mining technique that uses keywords in abstracts, titles and the whole body of papers and then identifies inclusive trends in CED literature. Originality/value The authors contribute to the extant accounting literature by investigating the organizational-level CED, both mandatory and voluntary, using a systematic and bibliometric literature review model to summarize the key research streams, themes, authors, journals, affiliations and countries. By doing so, the authors construct a future research agenda for CED literature

Multiple Effects of Host Density on Egg Density and the Sex Ratio of Progeny of Bracon hebetor (Say.) (Hymenoptera: Braconidae)

Insect parasitoid optimises their reproductive potential by exploiting host immune system, varying clutch size and progeny sex ratio with reference to the host density. Egg density and the progeny sex ratio of Bracon hebetor Say (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) was studied in relation to the larval density of its host Galleria mellonella (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae). Our findings revealed that parasitoid’s egg density increased with the increase in host density. A comparison was made between egg laying and egg hatching on different host densities and maximum number of egg laying was observed (134.7 eggs) at the highest host densities (16 larvae) while a minimum number of egg laying (15.6 eggs) was registered at lowest host density (one larvae). The egg hatching was decreased due to crowding of eggs laid on host’s larvae and the percentage of adult emergence was also decreased with the increase in crowding of eggs on host’s larvae. It was observed that progeny sex ratio (male/total) increased with the increase in host density. Further dispersion pattern of parasitoid eggs on different host densities were estimated by the Green index. This study has generated novel information on egg laying, egg dispersion and sex ratio of B. hebetor which may lead to the development of sustainable biocontrol programs for lepidopteron insect pests