DETERMINANTS AFFECTING THE CAPITAL STRUCTURE DECISION OF A FIRM (A CASE STUDY OF TEXTILE SECTOR IN PAKISTAN)

In this paper, we have examined the influence of specific factors based on a capital structure sample of five Pakistani textile sector (Leveraged) companies. The secondary data came from an analysis of the balance sheets of five companies listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange between 2004 and 2014.Regression and correlation analysis on the panel data shows that profitability is negatively correlated with leverage ratio, while tangibility is positively correlated with leverage ratio, but not significantly. Firm size and firm growth are also positively and significantly correlated with leverage. Return on equity is also negatively correlated with leverage. Our findings also show that large textile firms, compared with small ones, finance long-term through debt. Keywords: Capital Structure, Return on equity, Profitability, Tangibility, Leverage, Debt to equity ratio, Pakistan

Energy – Growth Nexus- A Case of South Asian Countries

The relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is a hot issue in today's society. This paper aims to empirically verify the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth. This article analyzes the relation of energy consumption with the economic growth taking the case of South Asian countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal) along with the macroeconomic determinants that affect the total economic growth – FDI growth, CPI rate and population growth in order to avoid omitted variable bias and misleading results. The time span of this study covers the period of 1980–2019. To examine the significant relation of these determinants and impact of energy consumption on economic growth, In-pooled regression, Fixed-effects, Bidirectional fixed effect, Random-effects, and GLS estimation regression model are used. The estimated results show a positive correlation of energy consumption and all other economic determinants with economic growth except CPI, where there is a negative correlation founded

Strategies for Accomplishing the Benefits of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor for Pakistan

CPEC represents a new form of China-Pakistan alliance with the aptitude to broaden and further enhance the political and economic ties of both these countries through mutual trade and development. The total projects, (presently) worth US$ 70billion offer an all times biggest opportunity to Pakistan to tackle the main hitches to its economic development i.e. energy crisis, poor infrastructure, low foreign direct investment (FDI), limited industrial production, limited and old fashioned  technology , unemployment and security issues etc. CPEC’s estimated socio-economic changes is going to bring harmony, contentment and stability in the country in general and particularly in the undeveloped and retrograded provinces like Baluchistan and somewhat khaiber Pukhtunkhwa (KPK) by providing employment opportunities in different commercial, construction and production activities. Despite the substantial consequences of CPEC, the project is collared by various internal and external confronts and disputes like India’s stances on the project, terrorism and instability of Afghanistan and its spillover to Pakistan and feeling unsecure of other countries in the region, Internally political conflicts between the provinces, security challenges and political controversies regarding the route selection etc. which are to be coped with by Pakistan so that to execute of the mega project of CPEC a beneficial endeavor for Pakistan. Keywords: CPEC, OBOR, Silk Rode, Economic Policy, Foreign Policy DOI: 10.7176/JESD/12-2-07 Publication date: January 31st 202

CHINA-PAKISTAN ECONOMIC CORRIDOR (CPEC’S) SOCIO-ECONOMIC IMPACTS ON PAKISTAN

CPEC being a mega project of the recent era not only in South Asia but throughout the world. CPEC is going to take place between Pakistan and China by bringing enormous economic betterment and lifestyle changes for the people living in Pakistan. Both countries, China and Pakistan are agreed to build one road one belt which is commonly known as China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) with the intentions to bring peace and prosperity as well as to enhance business activities by promoting trade with each other and with rest of the world, which will directly affect on economic growth. Being a mega economic project for both countries it will bring prosperity and economic stability. It will enhance Pakistan’s infrastructure (road, railway and telecommunication), overcome energy crises, develop trade, modernize and develop agriculture and manufacturing industry and mutual connectivity between people of both countries which is a very important factor for trade. China being the strongest economy of the present day will support the new economically arising country (Pakistan). China will pull Pakistan from the crises by applying modern technology and high financial support, which every country faces during the difficult time of raising its economy. This study helps to overlook and analyze the benefits of CPEC for the people of Pakistan. Keywords: China Pakistan Economic Corridor, One Belt One Road, Gwadar, Socio-Economic Developmen

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Multi-Objective Optimization of Customer-Centered Intermodal Freight Routing Problem Based on the Combination of DRSA and NSGA-III

The satisfaction of requirements and preferences of shippers is critical to enable the practicability of solutions that are derived from intermodal transportation routing problems. This study aims to propose a decision process to help shippers participate better in routing decisions. First, we considered shippers’ requests on transportation cost, timeliness, reliability, and flexibility to construct a multi-objective optimization model. Then, to solve the interactive optimization method that was proposed, NSGA-III was applied to obtain the Pareto front and dominance-based rough set approach to model the preference information. Finally, a case study was conducted and an expert was invited as decision-maker to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model and the effectiveness of the interactive method for shippers. The results are expected to provide shippers with more rational transportation schemes and insights for the sustainable development of intermodal transportation

Whitening Degree Evaluation Method to Test Estimate Accuracy of Speckle Covariance Matrix

In the background of sea clutter, the accuracy of adaptive target detection is heavily influenced by the estimated performance of speckle covariance matrix. Generally, Normalized Frobenius Norm (NFN) is used to test the estimated accuracy of different speckle covariance matrix estimators, in which the requirement of a known real covariance matrix is hardly realized in the radar system. Therefore, in this study, a whitening degree evaluation method is proposed wherein the decorrelation of speckle covariance matrix in whitening filter processing of the radar system is fully exploited. It considers the correlation degree among pulses in the whitening clutter vector as the criterion to evaluate the estimate error of the speckle covariance matrix. The proposed method shows consistent conclusions with NFN on simulated data and also avoids limitations of the latter method in real data processing

High-performance binary blazed grating coupler used in silicon-based hybrid photodetector integration

An efficient and high-performance binary blazed grating coupler was designed based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) used for silicon-based hybrid photodetector integration in an arrayed waveguide grating demodulation integrated microsystem. A relatively high coupling efficiency was obtained to optimize mode matching by the finite-difference time-domain method by choosing appropriate grating parameters, including period, etching depth, and fill factor. Coupling efficiency output at 1550 nm for the TE mode reached 68%. This value was \u3e60% in the wavelength range of 1450 to 1600 nm, specifically 71.4% around 1478 nm. An InP/InGaAs photodetector and SOI wafer were integrated by using benzocyclobutene (BCB) bonding. When the thickness of the BCB bonding layer was 440 nm, power absorption efficiency at 1550 nm for the TE mode reached 78.5%, whereas efficiency reached similar to 81.8% around 1475 nm

Has China\u27s belt and road initiative intensified bilateral trade links between China and the involved countries?

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is designed to intensify reciprocal trade preferentiality between China and the Belt-Road countries. However, there has been little research empirically examining the policy effects on the trade links between China and the involved countries. This paper attempts to evaluate the BRI effects quantitatively by constructing a new bilateral revealed trade preference index to measure the bilateral trade preferentiality between China and its 114 trading partners. Using a difference in differences model, we show that the trade of China with the Belt-Road countries has become more preferentially linked since the implementation of the BRI. In particular, the bilateral revealed trade preference index between China and the Belt-Road countries has grown approximately 8% faster than has that with the non-Belt-Road countries. We further show that the BRI effects are heterogeneous across different regions. The bilateral trade links have been more significantly intensified in the regions of the China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor. The findings strongly indicate that BRI has been acting as a catalyst for intensifying bilateral trade preferentiality between China and the Belt-Road countries