Measuring Business Cycle and Inflation Forecast: The Case of Pakistan

The output gap and inflation forecast are important factors to analyze current state of the economy and stance of monetary policy. In this study we have measured business cycle through estimating output gap using different methods namely the Linear Time Trend (LTT) method, Quadratic Time Trend (QTT) method, Hodrick-Prescott (HP filter), Band Pass Baxter-King Filter (BP), Double Exponential Smoothing Method (DES), Structural Vector Autoregressive (SVAR) method and Production Function (PF) method. For the analysis we have used annual data over the period 1960 to 2014 for Pakistan. Moreover, the inflation is forecasted with univariate and multivariate models. The results suggest that Quadratic Time Trend (QTT) method and Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) captures the history of Pakistan economy well. Whereas, output gap estimated through SVAR generate better inflation forecast compared to other methods. Keywords: output gap, inflation forecast, univariate, multivariate, business cycle JEL CLASSIFICATION: C22, C53, E3

Gender differences in clinical outcomes after percutaneous coronary intervention-analysis of 15,106 patients from the Cardiac Registry of Pakistan database

There is a scarcity of data on gender differences in outcomes during and after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in the South Asian population. We assessed the gender differences in in-hospital mortality and complications in patients who underwent PCI. We conducted a cross-sectional study of 15,106 patients from the CROP (Cardiac Registry of Pakistan) CathPCI database. Logistic regression was used to determine factors associated with in-hospital mortality (primary outcome), access site hematoma, and bleeding complications. Approximately 19.6% were women. Women were older (mean age = 57.3 vs 54.4 years) and had a higher prevalence of diabetes (49.3% vs 32.6%), hypertension (72.8% vs 56.4%), peripheral arterial disease (1.5% vs 1%), and cerebrovascular accident (1.2% vs 0.8%) than men (