Capital Markets and Foreign Ownership Restrictions: An Empirical Analysis of Emerging Stock Markets

In the 1990s, the hot issue in international finance was the growing interest of portfolio managers in the emerging stock markets. The interest in the emerging markets gained rapid attention, which is evident from the global trends, towards the opening up of economies and financial markets, free capital flow and the privatisation of financial institutions. Earlier the emerging markets were isolated due to several factors that had posed serious problems for international investors. These markets lacked the depth, regulatory framework, and structural safeguards that had characterised the equity markets in the developed world. Capital markets are called integrated, if assets with perfectly correlated rates of returns have the same price regardless of the location in which they are traded. Alternatively, capital market are called segmented, if financial assets traded in different markets “with identical risk characteristics” have different returns due to different investment restrictions.1 Segmentation may be due to individuals’ attitudes, government restrictions over capital movements or irrationality. In the past twenty-five years, modern finance theory has proved to be a major development in finance, which comprises of portfolio theory, capital market theory and efficient market theory. These modern developments can be traced back to the work of Markowitz (1959); Sharpe (1964); Solnik (1974) etc., which assumes that security prices fully reflect all publicly available information. Due to this information, potential investors can gain benefits through international diversification. The major attraction of forming international portfolios lies in the potential for risk reduction through diversification of unsystematic risk.

Pakistani learners' transition into university : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

This study aimed to explore the experiences of Pakistani learners in their transition to university, and to understand how they adapted to the new learning culture in university. Key factors explored included the influence of Pakistani learners’ expectations of and preparedness for university, prior learning experiences and medium of instruction on their transition into university. The research used a mixed methods approach in which data was collected sequentially. The study began with a quantitative questionnaire conducted with 154 first-year undergraduate students enrolled in four majors in the Bachelor of Studies in a public sector university in Pakistan. This was followed by the qualitative phase which consisted of three semi-structured interview rounds with 14 students selected from the participants in the questionnaire that was undertaken over the first semester of their enrolment. The quantitative findings provided a broad picture of the adaptation experiences of the learners and the influence of learners’ prior learning experiences and medium of instruction on their transition experiences. The qualitative findings also provided deeper insights into the transition experiences and how these were influenced and shaped by various pre-university and post-shift factors. Finally, the integration of the two sets of findings provided a more comprehensive understanding of the transition process and how the learners formulated new identities as independent university learners for successful transition into university. The findings of this study revealed that many of the transition experiences of the Pakistani learners in this study are similar to those in the international settings. However, some experiences are of a different nature due to Pakistan’s educational, cultural and historical background as a post-colonial nation. In particular, the country’s parallel public/private school education system and the Urdu/English dual medium of instruction policy have a significant influence on the learners’ transition into university, in shaping the adaptation experiences and the whole transition process. As a result of this study, it is suggested that there is a need to reform the school education system and to review education policies in order to bridge the gap between the school/college and university education and make transition into university a smoother process

Forecasting Performance of Alternative Error Correction Models

It is well established that regression analysis on non-stationary time series data may yield spurious results. An earlier response to this problem was to run regression with first difference of variables. But this transformation destroys any long-run information embodied in the levels of variables. According to ‘Granger Representation Theorem’ (Engle and Granger, 1987) if variables are co-integrated, there exist an error correction mechanism which incorporates long run information in modeling changes in variables. This mechanism employs an additional lag value of the disequilibrium error as an additional variable in modeling changes in variables. It has been argued that ECM performs better for long run forecast than a simple first difference or level regression. This process contributes to the literature in two important ways. Firstly empirical evidence does not exist on the relative merits of ECM arrived at using alternative co-integration techniques. The three popular co-integration procedures considered are the Engle-Granger (1987) two step procedure, the Johansen (1988) multivariate system based technique and the recently developed Auto regressive Distributed Lag based technique of Pesaran et al. (1996, 2001). Secondly, earlier studies on the forecasting performance of the ECM employed macroeconomic data on developed economies i.e. the US and the UK. By employing data form the Asian countries and using absolute version of the purchasing power parity and money demand function this paper compares forecast accuracy of the three alternative error correction models in forecasting the nominal exchange rate and monetary aggregate (M2).Co-integration, Error Correction Models, Forecasting

Stock Market in Pakistan: An Overview

This paper reviews the main features of the Stock market in Pakistan focussing on post-liberalization period. The aspects of the market investigated include liberalization of the market, integration the market with the world markets, trading and settlement mechanism, and corporate governance issues. Finally salient features of the market are compared to a selected set of emerging and developed markets. Pakistan’s stock market is smaller in size but is significantly more active than the markets of this size. In recent years the market has provided very high returns to investors. In 2002 the market was declared as the best performing stock market globally.Stock Market, Pakistan

Comparing performance of statistical models for individual’s ability index and ranking

Efficient allocation of resources is the basic problem in economics. Firms, educational institutions, universities are faces problem of estimating true abilities and ranking of individuals to be selected for job, admissions and scholarship awards etc. This study will provide a guide line what technique should to be used for estimating true ability indices and ranking that reveals ability with maximum efficiency as well as it clearly has the advantage of differentiating among individuals having equal raw score. Two major theories Classical Testing Theory and Item Response Theory have been using in the literature. We design two different Monte Carlo studies to investigate which theory is better and which model perform more efficiently. By discussing the weaknesses of CTT this study proved that IRT is superior to CTT. Different IRT models have been used in literature; we measured the performance of these models and found that Logistic P2 model is best model. By using this best model we estimate the ability indices of the students on the basis of their entry test scores and then compare with their abilities obtained from final board examination result (used as proxy of true abilities). This is a reasonable because the final exam consists of various papers and chance variation in ability Index is a minimum. With real life application this study also proved that IRT estimate the true abilities more efficiently as compared to classical methodology.Ability Index, Monte Carlo study, Logistic and Probit models, Item Response Theory, Classical Test Theory, Ranking of Students

Educational Exclusion in Digital Literacy - a comparitive study of British Muslim Girl Schools

Faith schools represent an important role in educating children in Britain and this has a long established history that continues to evolve with the diversity in our communities. Over more recent years there has been a growth in Muslim schools in England and this is viewed as a growing part of faith schools in Britain today. Muslim faith schools are integral to the transformation and restructuring of many in the British Muslim communities that is centered around the negotiation of new composite identities, changing family patterns and relationships, political activism and the fight against social exclusion (Hussain & O’Brien, 2000)