Determinants of Intra-Industry Trade between Pakistan and Selected SAARC Countries

This paper analyses country-specific and industry-specific determinants of intra-industry trade (IIT) between Pakistan and other SAARC countries using panel data techniques. This paper also disentangles total IIT into horizontal and vertical IIT. The Vertical IIT is further divided into high-quality and low quality IIT. This paper finds that country-specific variables are more important in explaining the IIT relative to industry-specific variables. The decomposition of IIT shows that in the SAARC region Pakistan’s IIT is mostly comprised of the vertical IIT. The share of horizontal IIT is comparatively less. The paper offers specific policy recommendations for the promotion of IIT in the SAARC region. JEL classification: F12, F14, F15 Keywords: IIT, Horizontal IIT, Vertical II

FBMC system: an insight into doubly dispersive channel impact

It has been claimed that filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) systems suffer from negligible performance loss caused by moderate dispersive channels in the absence of guard time protection between symbols. However, a theoretical and systematic explanation/analysis for the statement is missing in the literature to date. In this paper, based on one-tap minimum mean square error (MMSE) and zero-forcing (ZF) channel equalizations, the impact of doubly dispersive channel on the performance of FBMC systems is analyzed in terms of mean square error of received symbols. Based on this analytical framework, we prove that the circular convolution property between symbols and the corresponding channel coefficients in the frequency domain holds loosely with a set of inaccuracies. To facilitate analysis, we first model the FBMC system in a vector/matrix form and derive the estimated symbols as a sum of desired signal, noise, intersymbol interference (ISI), intercarrier interference (ICI), interblock interference (IBI), and estimation bias in the MMSE equalizer. Those terms are derived one-by-one and expressed as a function of channel parameters. The numerical results reveal that under harsh channel conditions, e.g., with large Doppler spread or channel delay spread, the FBMC system performance may be severely deteriorated and error floor will occur

Receiver Design for DCT Based Multicarrier Signals

DCT based multicarrier system also known as fast orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (FOFDM) is a promising multicarrier transmission technique that requires half the subcarrier spacing compared to conventional OFDM technique. The signal processing complexity and power consumption of such system is also less due to its real arithmetic operations compared to DFT based system (OFDM) that require complex arithmetic operations. However, unlike OFDM, FOFDM requires a finite impulse response (FIR) front-end pre-filter at the receiver to achieve single-tap equalization for simplifying the receiver design. The receiver design can be further improved using the fact that FOFDM system transmits real valued symbols compared to complex valued symbols in conventional OFDM. This fact enabled us to improve the system performance by exploiting the improperness of such DCT based multicarrier signals using widely linear processing (WLP). In this paper, a novel equalization technique using WLP is proposed to effectively improve the system performance, and it is shown that the proposed FOFDM receiver can provide better estimate of the tra

Impact of Public-Private-Partnership Programmes on Students’ Learning Outcomes: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment

Learning outcomes refer to the performance of the students in academic tests pertaining to the respective grade level. In Pakistan, survey evidences from Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) show a significant dispersion in learning outcomes of public schools as compared with private sector counterpart. The perceived results of learning outcomes in private schools very clear but less evidence is found for educational outcome of schools run under public-private partnership programs. This becomes especially relevant when status of curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular activities is compared between public school, private schools, and schools run under public private partnership. In recent literature, it is found that schools taken up by public-private partnership have been providing a better learning environment—Infrastructure Rehabilitation and Development, Administrative changes, Academic Innovation and Planning, Teacher Reform and Student Affairs—is perceived to have a positive impact on learning outcomes. It is to investigate and document that the investments in these areas are justifiable. To promote this fact, we conduct a quasi-experiment to examine the profiles of students in a public-private partnership school at Karachi (running under Zindagi Trust program) and a public school (as counterfactual) in the same neighbourhood. We also recorded the household and socioeconomic characteristics to create a good set of control variables. The propensity-score results show that public-private school is performing better than that of comparison group in attaining learning outcomes thus showing positive effects of PPP. Finally, the study probed into household and parental covariates of student's educational outcomes to enhance internal validity of results. JEL Classification: I21, C21, L32. Keywords: Educational Learning Outcomes, Public-Private Partnership, Quasi-experiment

PLAYERS’ PERCEPTION ABOUT COMMERCIALIZATION OF SPORTS IN ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS OF PAKISTAN

Commercialization is the way toward presenting another item or creation strategy into trade making it accessible available. The term frequently implies particularly the passageway into the mass market instead of prior specialty markets, however it additionally incorporates a move from the research facility into even constrained trade. The main objectives of the study are to examine the effects of commercialization of sports in academic institutions. The study was quantitative in nature and sample (n=260) for this research was from eight private and public sector universities of Lahore. The data collection tool was questionnaire containing 20 items. Results and data analysis showed that there is no difference among the opinion of male and female (Sig. 0.362) and among different age groups (Sig. 0.791). Overall results showed that there is positive effect of commercialization of sports in academic institutions as commercialization of sports helps players to develop their financial, sympathetic and caring attitude, their financial support, their recognition in society as well as their social support. Commercialization of sports promotes modesty and quality of life in them. Commercialization’s of sports also help to develop their personality with behavior and ethical values and awareness regarding their role in the society. In future recommendations, there should be panel discussions about commercialization of sports should be organized in collaboration of both coaches and athletes, there should be qualified staff for the commercialization, coaching and training of players, sports organizations and government should take necessary steps for the promotion of commercialization of sports at grass root as well as at international level

PLAYERS’ PERCEPTION ABOUT MODERNIZATION OF SPORTS EQUIPMENT AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL IN PAKISTAN

The main purpose behind conducting this research is to find out the players’ perception about modern sports equipment. With the help of literature review, the researchers came to know about the use of modern sports equipment and its importance. A quantitative research was conducted, and the research pattern adopted was survey research. The population of the study was players of different universities. Researcher collected data through questionnaire based on 20 close ended questions from 250 players as sample out of which 207 were usable in which 132 male and 75 female players were of age above 18 years via Simple random sampling technique. For the data analysis (SPSS) 22.0 Version was used. Individual Item Analysis (Chi-square Test) was used to view the responses against each item of questionnaire. Demographic factors of student players’ regarding age and gender were measured and calculated through ANOVA and T-Test respectively and found no significant difference among male and female (Sig. 0.759) as well as in different age groups (Sig. 0.356). Overall results showed that there are positive results of use of modern equipment on players’ performance. In concern with future recommendations, players should be allowed and facilitated as well as their familiarity with the use of modern sports equipment increased for better outcomes in their sports performance