A Comparison between Islamic Banking and Conventional Banking Sector in Pakistan

The Islamic banking system is attaining enormous development. Several modern international conventional banks were also enchanting significant concern and starting Islamic banking branches in their organizations, which work in compliance with the specific Islamic Shariah principles in a number of states of Pakistan. The Islamic banking structure is bizarrely facing gigantic contest by the Islamic banking sector all over the world as well as from the well-known International commercial banks that hold out services and products of IB. It is an attempt for exploration and investigation of the extensive and essential factors, which persuade consumers to choose the Islamic banking or conventional banking and the function of demographic features, which track consumers to the assortment of IB or CB in Pakistan. Sample of 341 respondents has been used in this study mainly focused on non-probability convenience test tool. Pre-institute 5 point likert survey instrument ranging from 5 to 1 was applied to gather data. The conclusion reveals that there are countless factors other than religious perception like employee and customer interactions, convenience, reputation, financial benefits & services, and technology, which are fundamental for the consumers for the assortment of Islamic or conventional banking. The demographic characteristics of the respondents also have a significant impact. The authors expect that the crux of this study will explore new ways for the Islamic banking system to emphasis on specific emerging factors to enhance the efficiency and performance of the Islamic banking system in Pakistan. There will be enormous advantage for executives of IBs & CBs in developing marketing approach

Competitiveness and Comparative Advantage of Pakistan in Leather and Leather Products Trade: Analysis and Trends

Livestock sector is considered the second key sector of agriculture through its share of more than half to value added and 11.8% to GDP and main source of raw material for leather industry of the country. This local availability of raw materials and low wage cost gives the country a competitive edge in the world market. This study is an effort to examine Pakistan's competitiveness of leather and leather products with a set of Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) and Revealed Competitive Advantage index with respect to international trade. The study has utilized Balassa index, Vollrath index and Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantage index for empirical analysis in Pakistan during the time span from 2003 to 2014. The findings of the study illustrate that Pakistan has a high degree of comparative advantage in this sector during period under analysis which indicates the potential of leather sector exports for foreign exchange earnings. The results of the study also show that the position of Leather sector lies in the “Competitive position product group” and “Threatened product group”. There is need to strengthen comparative and competitive advantage in Leather sector by policy support and facilitating role by all stakeholders to attain the growth in livestock and agriculture sector and improve the income of related stakeholders

Nonlinearity In Inflation, A Case of Pakistan

Recent research work has shown that inflation rate is asymmetric and it is also well known that asymmetry is a non-linear phenomenon. In order to better understand this non-linearity in inflation of Pakistan, we investigate the possible presence of Smooth Transition Autoregressive (STAR) non-linearity in inflation series. The study finds that month on month inflation series for Pakistan possesses both logistic and exponential STAR type non-linearity. Exponential Smooth transition function was proven to be more relevant on the basis of Dijk et al. (2000). Therefore, we develop ESTAR model in this paper which outperforms its linear rivals in forecasting

The Effect of Market and Entrepreneurial Orientation on Firm Performance

Market orientation (MO) and Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) have gained the importance in today’s world. Now these two are considered the main sources in the increase of firm performance. A corelation analysis is performed to understand and determine whether the market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation is associated with the firm performance. The Past studies did not analyze the effect of MO and EO on the firm performance. The research design and methodology adopted is given together with the findings leading to the conclusions related to propositions concerning the variables. The data is collected from various reputed universities that are giving the business education. Entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation provides the basic knowledge about the organizational learning that enables the organization to achieve the high performance and to understand the values of customers (Liu et al, 2002). The paper draws on survey data from 100 students including male and female students. The results show that EO and MO are strongly co-related with dependent variable. However, a few recommendations and future research is also given

Macroeconomic Instability and Its Impact on Gross Domestic Product: An Empirical Analysis of Pakistan

This study tries to answer the question, “has macroeconomic instability detrimental impact on gross domestic product of Pakistan over the period of 1980 to 2012?” For reviewing macroeconomic instability a comprehensive macroeconomic instability index is constructed by incorporating inflation rate, unemployment rate, trade deficit and budget deficit. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model has been used for examining the cointegration among the variables of the models and Vector Error-Correction model is used for short-run dynamics of the models. For investigating the causal relationship among the variables of the model Granger causality test has been applied. The empirical results of the study confirm the existence of cointegration between macroeconomic instability and gross domestic product in Pakistan. The results of the study show that macroeconomic instability has deep rooted and detrimental impact on gross domestic product of Pakistan. Hence, for achieving desired level of gross domestic product, Pakistan should make macroeconomic environment stable

Macroeconomic Instability and Its Impact on Gross Domestic Product: An Empirical Analysis of Pakistan

This study tries to answer the question, “has macroeconomic instability detrimental impact on gross domestic product of Pakistan over the period of 1980 to 2012?” For reviewing macroeconomic instability a comprehensive macroeconomic instability index is constructed by incorporating inflation rate, unemployment rate, trade deficit and budget deficit. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model has been used for examining the cointegration among the variables of the models and Vector Error-Correction model is used for short-run dynamics of the models. For investigating the causal relationship among the variables of the model Granger causality test has been applied. The empirical results of the study confirm the existence of cointegration between macroeconomic instability and gross domestic product in Pakistan. The results of the study show that macroeconomic instability has deep rooted and detrimental impact on gross domestic product of Pakistan. Hence, for achieving desired level of gross domestic product, Pakistan should make macroeconomic environment stable

Macroeconomic Instability and Its Impact on Gross Domestic Product: An Empirical Analysis of Pakistan

This study tries to answer the question, “has macroeconomic instability detrimental impact on gross domestic product of Pakistan over the period of 1980 to 2012?” For reviewing macroeconomic instability a comprehensive macroeconomic instability index is constructed by incorporating inflation rate, unemployment rate, trade deficit and budget deficit. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model has been used for examining the cointegration among the variables of the models and Vector Error-Correction model is used for short-run dynamics of the models. For investigating the causal relationship among the variables of the model Granger causality test has been applied. The empirical results of the study confirm the existence of cointegration between macroeconomic instability and gross domestic product in Pakistan. The results of the study show that macroeconomic instability has deep rooted and detrimental impact on gross domestic product of Pakistan. Hence, for achieving desired level of gross domestic product, Pakistan should make macroeconomic environment stable

Competitiveness, Diversification and Pakistan's Export Performance of Leather and Leather Products; A Constant Market Share Analysis

The present study focuses on measuring the competitiveness, diversifications and export performance of Pakistan`s selected leather and leather products in the global economy from 2003-2014. The study employs Constant Market Share Analysis to measure the competitiveness and suggests some policy measures that might be helpful to enhance the export volume which leads to a considerable increase in the foreign exchange that is indispensible for achieving desired economy. The findings of the study of the product group (4202) illustrate that average total effect, structural effect, specific competitive effect were positive, whereas average competitive effect, commodity effect, general competitive effect and market effect were negative from 2003-08. Furthermore, the results indicate that the average total effect, structural effect, commodity effect, competitive effect and specific competitive effect were positive, while market effect and general competitive effect were negative from 2009-14. Moreover, the analysis of the product group (4203) highlights that average total effect, structural effect, competitive effect, specific competitive effect, commodity effect were positive, whereas average general competitive effect and market effect were negative from 2003-08. In addition, the findings  indicate that the average total effect, structural effect, competitive effect and specific competitive effect were positive, while average commodity effect,  market effect,  general competitive effect were negative from 2009-14. The findings of the analysis illustrate that Pakistan has the potential to enhance its exports to the world, but some diversifications are required to be competitive in the world market

An agent-based simulation framework for complex systems

In this abstract we present a new approach to the simulation of complex systems as biological interaction networks, chemical reactions, ecosystems, etc. It aims at overcoming previously proposed analytical approaches that, because of several computational challenges, could not handle systems of realistic com- plexity. The proposed model is based on a set of agents interacting through a shared environment. Each agent functions independently from the others, and its be- havior is driven only by its current status and the "content" of the surrounding environment. The environment is the only "data repository" and does not store the value of variables, but only their presence and concentration. Each agent performs 3 main functions: 1. it samples the environment at random locations 2. based on the distribution of the sampled data and a proper Transfer Func- tion, it computes the rate at which the output values are generated 3. it writes the output "products" at random locations. The environment is modeled as a Really Random Access Memory (R2AM). Data is written and sampled at random memory locations. Each memory location represent an atomic sample (a molecule, a chemical compound, a protein, an ion, . . . ). Presence and concentration of these samples are what constitutes the environment data set. The environment can be sensitive to external stimuli (e.g., pH, Temperature, ...) and can include topological information to allow its partitioning (e.g. between nucleus and cytoplasm in a cell) and the modeling of sample "movements" within the environment. The proposed approach is easily scalable in both complexity and computa- tional costs. Each module could implement a very simple object as a single chemical reaction or a very complex process as a gene translation into a pro- tein. At the same time, from the hardware point of view, the complexity of the objects implementing a single agent can range from a single software process to a dedicated computer or hardware platfor