How Do the Poor Respond to Rising Prices?

Recent estimates show that after falling in the 1980s, poverty has made a comeback in Pakistan during the 1990s. The Government of Pakistan (GOP) estimate show an increase in caloric poverty headcount from 17 percent in 1987-88 to 33 percent in 1998-99 and also rising income inequality during the 1990s.1 In contrast preliminary estimates by the World Bank show that poverty may not have risen as rapidly during the 1990s and may even have stagnated.2 Slow down in economic growth, rising open unemployment, rising food and non-food prices, reduction in the fiscal space for pro-poor public programmes, poor governance hampering delivery of social services to the poor; are factors that have been attributed to the growing poverty and vulnerability of households in recent years. The Government has recently taken some important initiatives to deal with rising poverty. These include the Rs 21 billion Integrated Rural Urban Development public works programme, establishment of the Khushali Bank (Micro-Finance Bank) and the Food Support Programme for poor households with income less than Rs 2000/ PM. These programmes are in addition to the existing public social safety net programmes such as Zakat/Ushr and Pakistan Baitul Maal, and the Social Action Programme. The ongoing work on the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) is a laudable effort by the government to take poverty issues seriously and to come up with a poverty reduction strategy in a consultative and participatory manner.

How Do Women Decide to Work in Pakistan?

The incidence of women labour force participation is very low in Pakistan. According to the Labour Force Survey, 1999-2000 female participation rate was merely 14 percent of the total labour force. Even though average annual growth rate of female labour force participation has been increasing slightly in Pakistan; it was 4 percent in 1980-99 and has gone up to 5.1 percent during 1995-98,1 however, this rate is still very low as compared to the other South Asian countries—42 percent in Bangladesh, 41 percent in Nepal, 32 percent in India and Bhutan, 37 percent in Sri Lanka [World Bank (2002)]. This paper is an attempt to identify household related factors that lead to women participation in the economic activities. This issue has been taken up in a number of other studies.2 The innovative aspect of this paper is that it relates women’s decision to participate in economic activities with their empowerment—who makes the decision to participate in the labour force—whether it is the women themselves or others. We would like to state at the very onset that this paper is a first cut to explore the issues of women’s participation in economic activities and their and empowerment. We hope to get feedback in the conference to improve the technical aspects of this paper and explore other aspects of this issue. Some key empirical findings of this paper are that the women economic participation is significantly influenced by factors such as their age, education and marital status. The employment status of the head of the household (generally a male), presence of male member, and children of ages 0–5 are also important variables that significantly affect women’s participation in economic activities. We identified marital status, education level, family size, household’s financial status and area of residence as the main causal factors behind women making their own decisions about paid employment.

External Market Conditions, Competitiveness, Diversification, and Pakistan’s Export Performance

Pakistan’s exports evolve broadly in line with total world imports. Accordingly, Pakistan’s share in world imports was remarkably stable during the last 20 years, ranging between a minimum of 0.12 percent in 1980 and a maximum of 0.18 percent in 1992. In 1999-2000, the share was 0.15 percent. This would suggest that Pakistan’s export performance was not worse than that of the world on average. Compared to regional competitors, however, the performance was unimpressive, especially when compared to China and Thailand throughout the 1980s and 1990s or compared to Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka during the 1990s. All these countries succeeded in achieving sustainable market share increases in total world imports. In light of the growing awareness about the importance of exports in the overall economy of Pakistan and in view of the unimpressive export performance of Pakistan vis-à-vis other countries in the region it would be interesting to study the export performance of Pakistan and analyse the possible reasons for this poor performance and see whether it is due to demand deficiency or is it something to do with the supply side of the issue.

Export Diversification and the Structural Dynamics in the Growth Process: The Case of Pakistan

In the present paper we have tried to examine Pakistan’s experience with exports and growth by constructing several measures of diversification and structural change in Pakistan’s exports from a dis-aggregated data over a period of 27 years (1972-73 to 1997-98). Then using these measures we have tested a number of relationships among the structure of exports, export growth, aggregate growth, and world growth. By looking at the evolution and structural change of exports by sectors over the long run, we find a number of interesting results. First, the degree of export diversification increased sharply from 1979 and continued till 1985. After 1985, and with the return of the democracy in the country. There was a marked reduction in the export diversification and it went back to pre-1979 level. Secondly, a crude association of ‘traditionality’ with primary products and ‘non-traditionality’ with manufactured exports fails to represent Pakistan’s experience. As Pakistan emerged from an import substitution period into a period of structural change and free trade, its true comparative advantage was more visibly expressed, thus some manufactured exports declined while some primary products grew. Third, the shortrun dynamics of diversification and structural change show a marked pattern. Most change in the composition of exports has taken place during periods of boom in the domestic economy but when the world economy was experiencing a relatively recessionary period.

Pedagogy of Care: Emerging from The Crisis

This paper proposes to embed structured social, emotional, and professional learning tutorials in one of the core-courses that this author teaches to international students enrolled in the Master of Medical Biotechnology (MMB) program offered by the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Windsor. The broad overarching goals are to offer emotion regulation, stress management, resilience, and work-life balance strategies for international students to feel greater autonomy in their lives, in mitigating pandemic-related anxiety, and a sense of ownership in the Canadian economy. New, emerging trends, structural changes, and circumstances redefine how institutions should be organized tomorrow to become the nexus of a new educational model emerging from the crisis and built for the next normal

Identification of human YVH1 substrates and binding partners using biological mass spectrometry.

Dual specificity phosphatases belong to the protein tyrosine phosphatase family of enzymes. These members have the ability to dephosphorylate both phosphotyrosine and phosphoserine/-phosphothreonine residues on the substrate proteins and have been found to be the regulators of critical cellular functions such as cell growth and cell cycle progression. The first dual specificity phosphatase was identified from vaccina virus. Later studies found homologues of VH1 in other organisms including yeast and humans. The human homologue, hYVH1, is a 36kDa enzyme containing a novel zinc finger domain. This research project was carried out as a first step towards the physiological characterization of this enzyme. In this project, we have identified the first associating protein of hYVH1 using affinity chromatography and mass spectrometry. The protein identified is Hsp70, a member of the heat shock family of proteins, known to get induced in response to cellular insults and to prevent apoptosis. Using substrate trapping mutants and two-dimensional gel electrophoresis we have identified unique spots which qualify to be the potential substrate of hYVH1. The identification and functional characterization of these potential substrates and interacting proteins will greatly enhance the elucidation of the physiological relevance of this evolutionary conserved phosphatase. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2005 .B88. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-03, page: 1366. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2005

FaceSnap: Game-based Courseware as a Learning Tool for Children with Social Impairment

Nowadays, computer games have been seen not just as a form of entertainment but also as a source of education. Gaming has been viewed as a way of making education fun and is able to engage children in the learning process longer. Games do not only help normal children but also children with disabilities. The objective of this project is to find the most suitable game-based method for children with social impairment and to develop the courseware to see its effectiveness. This courseware will help the children to Jearn facial expression and social behaviour targeting children with Asperger's Syndrome. The methodology used in this project is Rapid Application Development (RAD) and the tools used for the courseware development are Adobe Flash, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Soundbooth. Six children are tested playing this game to see whether there is any improvement in their score. These children are divided into Asperger' s Syndrome group and control group which consist of normal children to see their comparison. The result shows that there is improvement in their scores which indicates that this courseware is effective in helping children with social impairment to learn about facial expressions and social behaviour