The Demand for International Reserves: A Case Study of Pakistan

Reserves-holding policy has been a main area of concern for policy-makers, researchers, and planners since the beginning of the Bretton Woods system. As a result, issues related to the equilibrium of international reserves, its determinants, and the departure from equilibrium have been widely discussed in the debates of economic policy-making. In spite of its importance, no serious attempt has been made to work on the determinants of international reserves in the case of Pakistan. Therefore, we have made an endeavour to determine the long-run and short-run determinants of Pakistan’s international reserves-holding and, hence, we hope to contribute to the literature on reserves in the case of Pakistan. We have also considered the role of monetary disequilibrium in the short-run, along with the other determinants in the explanation of international reserves-holding. In the context of cointegration-error correction framework, we have analysed Pakistan’s reserve demand using the quarterly data over the period 1982:1-2003-2 and found that there exists a stable long-run reserves demand function in the case of Pakistan. The results also confirm the role of domestic monetary disequilibrium for changes in reserves in the short-run

Endogenous Institutional Change and Privileged Groups

Since the recent advances in the institutional perspective of economic development, there is considerable increase in the literature on the evolution of institutions. In this study, while employing the game theoretic approach, we explore the rent-seeking fundamentals of institutions. We model the manner in which the rent-seeking behaviour of state actors results in inefficiency of the institutional framework. The main focus is on the rents provided by the availability of natural resources wealth, foreign aid or corruption potential. By originating a framework where rulers, agents of the state, and citizens act endogenously, we show that the rents from these resources can be a significant constraint to institutional reforms. In order to come out of the bad institutions trap, the society needs to offer a substantial amount of incentives to the privileged groups. The focus is on two privileged groups, i.e. the rulers and the state agents. In most of the societies, these two groups have the highest bargaining power in the negotiations over the rules and institutions. JEL Classification:JEL Classification: P48, P16, P14, O43, D73 Institutional Reforms, Natural Resources Wealth, Foreign Aid,Corruption Potential, Rulers, Agents of the Stat

Understanding a novice teacher’s learning to teach in a private school for girls in Karachi, Pakistan

This paper reports the findings of a qualitative case study conducted in order to understand the learning experiences of a novice primary school teacher, Sajda (pseudonym), who was teaching in a private Community-Based English-Medium School in Karachi. During her appointment as a teacher she had an intermediate level academic qualification and had no exposure to any professional training course. The research question for the study was: How does a novice teacher experience her learning to teach in a private sector school in Karachi, Pakistan? Data for the study was collected through semi-structured interviews and field notes and was analyzed through NVivo, which is a systematic software to analyze qualitative data. Findings of the study show that when Sajda entered the teaching profession she faced different types of experiences in the process of learning to teach. She felt pride and happiness at the time of her appointment as a teacher. Prior to experiencing in the classroom she thought of teaching to be an easy job and that everyone could do that, but as soon as she entered her classroom, she came across a very different situation. She experienced both frustration and shocks. These experiences thus prove to be very different from what she was expecting initially. Data shows that preparations for her classroom teaching, collaborative school environment and professional development courses gave her confidence and encouraged her to overcome the challenges in the classroom. After taking all of this into account, the paper concludes with recommendations and implications for supporting novice teachers in the schools

Conducting Narrative Studies in Pakistan: Reflections from the Field

This reflective paper emerges from the reflections on my experience to carry out narrative studies in Pakistan —a country where narrative research in education is still very young. Field-notes, reflective journals and research memos were the key sources of triggering reflections on my learning to take the identity of a narrative researcher in a context where this approach is very young.  My reflections show the learning experience in conceptualising and practicing narrative studies in the country. The paper shows that I took the roles of an insider, co-constructor of stories, and trust-builder while taking up the identity of a narrative researcher in Pakistan. In addition, becoming a gender sensitive and knowing language and culture of the research participants enabled me to take up the role smoothly.  Findings have pertinent implications for life history research studies in Pakistan and elsewhere

The Hideous Beauty of Bird-Shaped Burns –Transnational Allegory and Feminist Rhetoric in Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows

This paper explores the forces of nationalism and transnationalism and examines the ways in which they are intricately and inextricably linked in Kamila Shamsie's most recent novel, Burnt Shadows. It explores Burnt Shadows for its nationalistic rhetoric, arguing the case for its attempt to critically analyze the status of Pakistanis and Muslims in a post ‘9/11’ world order, particularly within the contemporary discourses on terrorism, capitalism and Islamic fundamentalism. The paper attempts at connecting the novel’s alternative version of nationalism with the forces of feminism, via the novel’s unusual and ubiquitous protagonist, Hiroko Tanaka. It argues that while Hiroko poses serious challenges to existing and normative power structures, her physical body serves as a manuscript upon which national and political upheavals are literally and metaphorically transcribed, reflecting the novel’s demonstration of women’s bodies as sites of conflict between nationalism and colonialism. It offers the novel as an attempt at ‘psychic healing’ – a work that embraces nationalism transnationally, hence propounding an ‘imagined community’ (Hicks, xxiii-xxxi) that makes possible the existence of a kind of ‘horizontal comradeship’, transcending national borderlands and cultural boundaries

Information technology and cost efficiency in Malaysian banking industry

It is argued that information technology can increase cost efficiency of banks by offering opportunities to substitute across inputs into production – for example, to substitute computer technology and information networks for labor. Hence, the transition to a knowledge-based financial sector would lead to banks becoming more competitive, more cost effective and better able in managing risks. As such, those banks that failed to make this transition are less able to compete as they lack the capability to innovate and face higher delivery costs. The main objectives of this paper are to determine the impact of IT on banking efficiency and its economies of scale using a sample of Malaysian banks. To achieve these objectives, stochastic cost frontier method is employed to estimate bank efficiency and panel data approach were used to examine the impact of IT on bank efficiency. The results indicate that the impact of IT on bank efficiency increases with increase in bank size, hence further supporting the process of bank mergers that are currently undertaken in the Malaysian banking industry

Can We Solve the Issue of Poverty Without Solving the Issue of Conventional Economic Paradigm: A Critical Review

The primary focus of economics is to allocate resources in order to achieve the well-being of humans. Wellbeing has many dimensions, ranging from the level of mere subsistence to the equality of opportunities to accumulate, and to safeguard life and wealth. Poverty, thus, is one of the parameters for measuring the welfare of society in general. Given this importance, the Millennium Development Goals aim at halving the world poverty by 2015. Many organisations in the world set poverty eradication as one of their key objectives. Likewise, poverty reduction has got a central place in the international politics. Accordingly, each country including Pakistan has launched programmes for the alleviation of this great menace. The election manifesto of all the mainstream political parties in Pakistan includes poverty alleviation as one of their main goals. Additionally, poverty alleviation is one of the major subjects of talks in electronic media and in the editorials of newspapers, both at the national and at the international level. Nevertheless, poverty is still a major problem of humanity across the globe

Dictatorships, Patronage and Public Good Provision: Some Empirics

Dictatorship has been one of the most persistent regimes types in history. Different dictators have applied different strategies for maintaining political support across different societies. We discuss and empirically estimate the hypothesis that states that dictators rely more on patronage as compared to the general provision of public goods for political support. Our results, based on the data from cross-section of the countries from all continents, confirm this hypothesis. We use military spending as an indicator of the patronage to military and the secondary school enrolment as an indicator of the provision of public goods. In the separate sets of regressions, we conclude that dictatorship has a significant negative effect on the secondary school enrolment rate and a significant positive effect on military expenditure as percentage of GDP. These effects, in turn, might have caused the persistent of dictatorships in many societies. In order to generalise these findings, we also check robustness of the findings with respect to other variables like infant mortality rate, average life expectancy, Human Development Index (HDI), corruption, rule of law, ease of doing business and competitiveness. The robustness analysis confirms our findings. JEL Classification: P16, H11, H41, H42 Keywords: Dictatorship, Patronage, Public Goods Provision, Military Spending, Secondary School Enrolment Rate, Robustness Analysi

The Demand for International Reserves: A Case Study of Pakistan

Foreign exchange reserves have clear implications for exchange rate stability, financial markets, and hence, for overall economic activity. Stakeholders have different views about reserves holding. Some economists believe that foreign exchange reserves are useless and unutilised as Friedman (1953) criticised the fixed exchange rate system with the argument that it contains unutilised foreign exchange reserves. On the other hand, some economists argue that foreign exchange reserves should be there to smooth out the imbalances in balance of payments [see Kemal (2002)]. There is continuous debate about the need to hold reserves.1 The critics are worried about the cost of holding reserves. The cost of holding reserves is the investment that nations must forego in order to accumulate reserves. In contrast, the supporters of reserves holding argue that the cost of reserves holding is small compared to the economic consequences of exchange rate variations. For instance, a depreciation in the value of the currency, caused by either financial crises or others internal or external shocks, may raise a country’s costs of paying back debt denominated in foreign currency as well as its costs of imported items. Besides, it also creates high inflation expectations