Working to Improve Price Indices Development in Pakistan

Given the importance of Consumer Price Index (CPI), there has been long debate on its measurement issues. It is the best and most well-known indicator of inflation, which is further used for evaluating the monetary and fiscal policy of a country. Other uses of CPI for indexation are social security benefits, rents, contractual payments, taxation, deflating national income accounts, purchasing power parity index, inflation incidence for different income groups of population, impact of inflation on demographic composition of the population. Any measurement error in CPI may overstate or understate inflation that will have serious repercussions for monetary, fiscal and other economic policies. The report of the Boskin Commission [Boskin, et al. (1996)] has identified possible sources of bias in the CPI like substitution bias, outlet bias, quality bias, new product bias. In this paper we have tried to evaluate these biases and to start a debate on improving Consumer Price Index (CPI) construction in Pakistan. We found that there are biases of Commodity Substitution Bias, Outlet Substitution Bias, Quality Adjustment Bias, Index Calculation Bias and New Product Bias. Other limitations for the CPI index including; Issue of selecting a representative product (or good), Defining issue of average quality, Data collection, weights determination and Base year change were also found.Consumer Price Index, Biases in CPI, CPI Formulae

Working to Improve Price Indices Development in Pakistan

Given the importance of Consumer Price Index (CPI), there has been long debate on its measurement issues. It is the best and most well-known indicator of inflation, which is further used for evaluating the monetary and fiscal policy of a country. Other uses of CPI for indexation are social security benefits, rents, contractual payments, taxation, deflating national income accounts, purchasing power parity index, inflation incidence for different income groups of population, impact of inflation on demographic composition of the population. Any measurement error in CPI may overstate or understate inflation that will have serious repercussions for monetary, fiscal and other economic policies. The report of the Boskin Commission [Boskin, et al. (1996)] has identified possible sources of bias in the CPI like substitution bias, outlet bias, quality bias, new product bias. In this paper we have tried to evaluate these biases and to start a debate on improving Consumer Price Index (CPI) construction in Pakistan. We found that there are biases of Commodity Substitution Bias, Outlet Substitution Bias, Quality Adjustment Bias, Index Calculation Bias and New Product Bias. Other limitations for the CPI index including; Issue of selecting a representative product (or good), Defining issue of average quality, Data collection, weights determination and Base year change were also found.Consumer Price Index, Biases in CPI, CPI Formulae

Enhanced Augmented Reality Framework for Sports Entertainment Applications

Augmented Reality (AR) superimposes virtual information on real-world data, such as displaying useful information on videos/images of a scene. This dissertation presents an Enhanced AR (EAR) framework for displaying useful information on images of a sports game. The challenge in such applications is robust object detection and recognition. This is even more challenging when there is strong sunlight. We address the phenomenon where a captured image is degraded by strong sunlight. The developed framework consists of an image enhancement technique to improve the accuracy of subsequent player and face detection. The image enhancement is followed by player detection, face detection, recognition of players, and display of personal information of players. First, an algorithm based on Multi-Scale Retinex (MSR) is proposed for image enhancement. For the tasks of player and face detection, we use adaptive boosting algorithm with Haar-like features for both feature selection and classification. The player face recognition algorithm uses adaptive boosting with the LDA for feature selection and nearest neighbor classifier for classification. The framework can be deployed in any sports where a viewer captures images. Display of players-specific information enhances the end-user experience. Detailed experiments are performed on 2096 diverse images captured using a digital camera and smartphone. The images contain players in different poses, expressions, and illuminations. Player face recognition module requires players faces to be frontal or up to ?350 of pose variation. The work demonstrates the great potential of computer vision based approaches for future development of AR applications.COMSATS Institute of Information Technolog

Social and Economic Determinants of Divorce in Pakistan: A Case Study of Multan District

The objective of the study is to analyze the social and economic factors that affect divorce in Pakistan. The study collects cross sectional data of 1000 women respondents through simple random sampling technique from urban and rural areas of Multan district. On the basis of graphical analysis, the study concludes Education of Respondent, Arranged Marriage, Education of Husband, Income of Husband, Use of Drugs by Husband, Bata System, Age at Marriage, Husband Abuse and Son’s Wish as significant factors affecting divorce of women in Pakistan. Keywords: Cross Sectional Data, Multan District, Education, Drug Addiction, Age, Abuse, Son’s Wish, Incom

Effect of assertiveness skills on job burnout

Assertiveness is the ability to express oneself and one’s rights without violating the rights of others. The need for assertiveness is widely acknowledged in different work settings, and in order to manage the stress of working as part of a team every day, one has to become assertive. The purpose of present study is to investigate the effect of assertiveness skills on job burnout. The random sampling technique was employed. The data were gathered from 100 respondents. The adapted questionnaire was used. The advanced econometric technique was employed for data analysis. The SPSS 22 was employed as tool for data analysis. The findings of study revealed that assertiveness skills have negative effect on job burnout. With increase the level of assertiveness skills, increase consistency and confidence and reduce conflict and stress leads to decrease burnout. The study also recommends improving the management, regulation and facilities for preventing of risk of job burnout

How to Read a Book in Five Minutes?

When you are engaged in a research thesis, you will normally have to understand a great deal of published material of various kinds. If you attempt literally to read all of this it will take you ages. Most likely, you simply will not have the time to do so on top of all of your other plans and responsibilities. So, you will have to be much more selective in your reading of most of it. For example, is it possible? Can you read a books, reports and articles quickly and effectively for research purposes? Can you get to the gist of the argument and pull out the material or details you want within minutes

Measuring the Education Gap in Primary and Secondary Schooling in Pakistan

The investment in primary and secondary education is a fundamental premise for achieving social and economic development, for increasing labour productivity and for facilitating expansion in higher education. Ensuring that new generations of children receive at least primary education and that substantial proportions continue up to secondary levels of schooling, an accurate monitoring of the educational change becomes essential for assessing past progress and planning the future course of educational development. This paper is an attempt in this direction to examine the existing differentials and gaps in enrolment, educational retention and capacity utilisation at primary and secondary levels of schooling in Pakistan with special attention given to the impact of educational plans and policies on these trends. The study is based on both enrolment statistics and data on educational institutions during the seventies and mid-eighties. The enrolment statistics permit calculation of enrolment and continuation ratios for measuring the magnitude of non-participation of children in schools, while information on number of schools provides the possibility of assessing the extent of utilisation of educational facilities and measuring the gaps between existing and needed facilities for schools. We have focused on primary and secondary schooling with a view to recognise and address the basic issue concerning the development of school education in Pakistan

Emerging Next Generation Solar Cells Route to High Efficiency and Low Cost

Generation of clean energy is one of the main challenges of the 21st century. Solar energy is the most abundantly available renewable energy source which would be supplying more than 50 of the global electricity demand in 2100. Solar cells are used to convert light energy into electrical energy directly with an appeal that it does not generate any harmful bi products, like greenhouse gasses. The manufacturing of solar cells is actually based on the types of semiconducting or non semiconducting materials used and commercial maturity. From the very beginning of the terrestrial use of Solar Cells, efficiency and costs are the main focusing areas of research. The definition of so called emerging technologies sometimes described as including any technology capable of overcoming the Shockley-Queisser limit of power conversion efficiency 33.7 percent for a single junction device. In this paper, few promising materials for solar cells are discussed including their structural morphology, electrical and optical properties. The excellent state of the art technology, advantages and potential research issues yet to be explored are also pointed out. Md. Samiul Islam Sadek | Dr. M Junaebur Rashid | Dr. Zahid Hasan Mahmood "Emerging Next Generation Solar Cells: Route to High Efficiency and Low Cost" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-1 | Issue-4 , June 201