Economic Evaluation of Health Cost of Pesticide Use: Willingness to Pay Method

This study highlights the results of contingent valuation method to measure health cost of pesticide use from farmer’s point of view. Analysis shows that farmers have a positive willingness to pay for avoiding pesticide related health risks. Theoretical validity tests show that relevant indicators such as risk perception, previous experience of pesticide related poisoning, education and income are significant predictors for the Positive WTP. From the results it is evident that health effects of pesticide use provided motivation for farmers to pay more for practices like IPM that reduce dependence on pesticide use which in turn a strong motivation for policy makers to continue research on IPM and its implementation.Health cost, WTP, pesticide use, IPM.

Ethical human resource management: a critical analysis

In modern day, Human Resource Management (HRM) is seen as a mere variant of management control aiming intentionally to ‘colonize’ the identity of the individual employee which points to the contradictions between the idealised HRM theories and its practice commonly referred to as the difference between rhetoric and reality. These critical analyses suggest that HRM reflects a historical shift in the way work is defined and managed and research has to be undertaken on how morality and ethics may be represented in the discourse, lived experiences, practice and broader context of HR professionals. The HR function will continue to face challenges in balancing business imperatives and ethical values but as long as the corporate and HR leadership remains committed, no challenge may be insurmountable

Equal Sum Sequences and Imbalance Sets of Tournaments

Reid conjectured that any finite set of non-negative integers is the score set of some tournament and Yao gave a non-constructive proof of Reid's conjecture using arithmetic arguments. No constructive proof has been found since. In this paper, we investigate a related problem, namely, which sets of integers are imbalance sets of tournaments. We completely solve the tournament imbalance set problem (TIS) and also estimate the minimal order of a tournament realizing an imbalance set. Our proofs are constructive and provide a pseudo-polynomial time algorithm to realize any imbalance set. Along the way, we generalize the well-known equal sum subsets problem (ESS) to define the equal sum sequences problem (ESSeq) and show it to be NP-complete. We then prove that ESSeq reduces to TIS and so, due to the pseudo-polynomial time complexity, TIS is weakly NP-complete.Comment: Presented at the Retrospective Workshop on Discrete Geometry, Optimization and Symmetry, 25-29 Nov 2013, The Fields Institute, Toronto, Canad

What Determines Private Investment? The Case of Pakistan

This study is an attempt to analyse the determinants of private investment in Pakistan over the period 1972-2005. The ARDL co-integration approach is employed to check the existence of a long-run relationship as well as short-run dynamics of investment. The results show that most traditional factors have little or no impact on private investment. These results may support the idea that nontraditional factors such as quality of institutions, governance, entrepreneurial skill, etc., are prerequisites for private investment to flourish. We find partial support for the accelerator principle and the crowding-out hypothesis in the case of Pakistan. However, the hypothesis that the volume of the funds is as important as the cost of the funds used in financing private investment and the McKinnon-Shaw hypothesis are not verified in the case of Pakistan.Private Investment, Growth, Crowding Out, Co-integration

What Determines Private Investment? The Case of Pakistan

This study is an attempt to analyse the determinants of private investment in Pakistan over the period 1972-2005. The ARDL co-integration approach is employed to check the existence of a long-run relationship as well as short-run dynamics of investment. The results show that most traditional factors have little or no impact on private investment. These results may support the idea that nontraditional factors such as quality of institutions, governance, entrepreneurial skill, etc., are prerequisites for private investment to flourish. We find partial support for the accelerator principle and the crowding-out hypothesis in the case of Pakistan. However, the hypothesis that the volume of the funds is as important as the cost of the funds used in financing private investment and the McKinnon-Shaw hypothesis are not verified in the case of Pakistan.Private Investment, Growth, Crowding Out, co-integration

Financial Sector Restructuring in Pakistan

In this paper an attempt has been made to review the financial restructuring process and its importance for economic growth and macroeconomic stability. The main focus is on the financial restructuring efforts undertaken by the government of Pakistan since 1990. We alsoanalyze the impacts of financial restructuring by using various financial indicators. The overallresults suggest that financial industry in Pakistan showing remarkable and unprecedented growth.Unlike 1990, the performance of financial sector is much better today. After the successfullycompletion of first generation of reforms, the introduction of second generation of reforms arerequired, which helps further strengthen the financial system and transform the benefits of the first generation of reforms to common man.

Sustainable Cotton Production Through Skill Development among Farmers: Evidence from Khairpur District of Sindh, Pakistan.

This study on farmers’ training in environment-friendly production practices for cotton crop was conducted in the Khairpur District of Sindh province. Data used in this study comprises baseline and post- IPM Farmer Field School (FFS) impact surveys conducted during 2001 and 2003 respectively. The programme impacts were estimated on gross margins and changes in farmers’ attitude towards environment and biodiversity. The effect of training on social recognition of farmers, their experimentation abilities, and decision-making skills were also examined. Beside single difference comparisons of change in production practices between trained and non-trained farmers, the difference in difference (DD) method was also used for comparisons among FFS farmers, exposed farmers, and unexposed farmers from controlled villages. The stochastic production frontier model incorporating inefficiency effects is also estimated to analyse the impact of farmers’ training (through FFS) on productivity and efficiency at cotton farms in the area under study. The results show that better cotton yield and reduction in the cost of pesticides and fertiliser inputs enabled FFS farmers to fetch significantly higher gross margins (US$391/ha) than non-FFS (US$ 151/ha) and Control farms (US$ 25/ha). The total application of pesticide chemicals was largely reduced (44 percent) on FFS farms. The cost of inefficiency at FFS farms was lower (23.71 percent) as compared to those on non-FFS farms (30.50 percent), which implies that FFS farmers were able to maintain a higher level of technical efficiency. It is concluded that the FFS approach is not only cost efficient but also improves farm-level technical efficiency. Information generated through Agro-ecosystem analysis on pest and predator dynamics helps farmers to understand pest-predator interaction to allow nature to work with fewer or most appropriate interventions. A wellplanned technical back-up support mechanism is recommended to be evolved through integrating the research system into farmer-led experimentation. The programme achievements show that the FFS approach in Pakistan has furthered from only crop management to systems management and community