Essays on the financial constraints and related firm behaviour: the case of Pakistan

The aim of this thesis is to enhance the understanding of the suitable measures of financial constraints for the case of a developing country and the effects of financial constraints on firm‟s activities. In this respect, we employ data for Pakistani listed non-financial firms from 2006 to 2015, check the presence of financial constraints, evaluate measures of financial constraints and examine the effects of financial constraints on a firm‟s behaviour. A number of studies check the presence of financial constraints at firm level for the case of developed countries. However, Due to different set up of financial markets between developed and developing countries, the effects of financial constraints on firm‟s activity may differ for developing country. Moreover, the measures of financial constraints have been introduced in the setup of developed countries; using those measures for the case of developing country without evaluation can misguide the findings. Besides, literature does not give any accurate measure of financial constraints. By addressing these gaps, our first empirical chapter of this study uses two different estimation frameworks: q model and error correction model to check the presence of financial constraints at firm-level. The findings in the first empirical chapter indicate the presence of financial constraints in the listed Pakistani firms, where large and dividend-paying firms are found to be less financially constrained than small and non-dividend-paying firms. We further use the latest measures of financial constraints: KZ index, WW index, HP index, and assets tangibility to sort firms into financially constrained statuses. We find that WW index, HP index, and assets tangibility are performing better, showing the difficult access to external finance among Pakistani listed firms. In addition, to evaluate the applicability of these measures for the setting of Pakistan, we regress the accounting variables of the latest measures on the financial constraint status of the firms. We find cash flow, total debt, age, and cash holdings as continuous significant determinants of a firm‟s financial status in different modelling estimations. We explore the role of financial constraints on firms‟ export entry decisions in our second empirical chapter. Previous studies show a link between financial health and export participation decision leaving a gap for us to check the role of financial constraints in export participation decision. Moreover, most of the previous studies examine this relationship for the developed economies; while studies on this relationship in the context of an emerging developing economy like Pakistan is very important for the policy makers of the country. Our empirical study finds exporters are significantly different from non-exporters in terms of the level of financial constraints. By using different estimators to estimate the export market empirical specification, a firm‟s financial constraint status appears to be a determining factor of an export entry decision. Consistent results are found for two different measures of financial constraints. In addition, we find Export entrants are less financially constrained in terms of assets tangibility, before entering the export market. Inconsistent with previous studies, we do not find that liquidity level of the firm is playing any significant role in export participation decisions for the case of Pakistani firms. In the third empirical chapter, we study the relationship between financial constraints, political connections and performance of the firms. Some studies show a relationship between political connections and financial status of the firms, while some other studies show a relationship between firms‟ financial status and firms‟ performance. This is the first study which checks the direct relationship between political connections, financial constraints and performance of the firms. Literature shows that political relationship has been used as useful resources of the firms, studies in this context for the case of developing country can be particularly important for policy makers to use these resources for the benefit of the firms. By using two different measures of political connections and instrumental variable approach, our study shows that firms‟ formal political connections make firms less financially constrained. In addition, we find strong evidence that politically connected firms are performing badly. These results are robust to three different measures of a firm‟s performance. We further find some evidences that the effects of political connections on firms performance do vary across different financial statuses of the firms

Productivity of Backwaters and Estuaries

The main reason why the backwaters and estuaries have been included in the Symposium on "The Biology of the Indian Ocean" is that, in certain regions of the Indian Ocean, the backwaters with their associated river system form a fairly large part of the inshore waters and influence the hydrography of the coastal water considerably

Production of living matter in the sea

There has always been a general agreement among the sc ientists that many more living organisms exist i~ the sea than on land . Scientists have already found about one hundred and fifty thousand different forms of lifc in the sea and they are adding to the list at thc rate of aRDut three new ones per day. S;ientists also believe that it is the sea that hes been the first home of living things

Pharmaceutical Potential of Marine Organisms

The use of extracts of plants and animals for medicinal purposes is a practice as old as the history of mankind. However, man's efforts have largely been confined to land plants and animals probably because of their easy accessibility. These represent only 20% of the earth 's total plant and animal life. The oceans, which cover about 71 % of the earth, support very rich plant and animal life, classified under more than 30 flora and faun a. Some of these are exclusively marine and thrive under extremely diverse environmental conditions

Are there enough shrimps in the sea?

The subject on shrimps seems very timely indeed, because not a day passes without our hearing or reading something about the shortage of prawns in Kerala. There seems a general agreement amongst the fishermen and the fishery industrialists that the shrimp stocks are on the decline. Such a complete agreement, however, does not exist among the fishery scientists. A considerable apprehension is also being expressed by the other maritime states of India, for they feel that what Kerala is facing today, they might have to face later on

Book Review: The fish resources of the Ocean (J.A. Gulland - comp. and ed.,)

QULLAND, J. A. [Compiler and Editor] 1971. The fish resources of the ocean. Fishing News (Books) Ltd., Surrey, England, xi+special map section+255 pp. Price £ 10.50

Time and Duration of the Spawning Season in some marine teleosts in relation to their distribution.

A part of a study of the biology of the common shore fishes Blennius pholis and Centronotus gunnellus, the times and durations of the breeding seasons were determined and the cycles of maturation and depletion of the gonads were followed throughout the year. It then appeared that the breeding cycles of thc two species are very differen

Analyzing Energy-efficiency and Route-selection of Multi-level Hierarchal Routing Protocols in WSNs

The advent and development in the field of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in recent years has seen the growth of extremely small and low-cost sensors that possess sensing, signal processing and wireless communication capabilities. These sensors can be expended at a much lower cost and are capable of detecting conditions such as temperature, sound, security or any other system. A good protocol design should be able to scale well both in energy heterogeneous and homogeneous environment, meet the demands of different application scenarios and guarantee reliability. On this basis, we have compared six different protocols of different scenarios which are presenting their own schemes of energy minimizing, clustering and route selection in order to have more effective communication. This research is motivated to have an insight that which of the under consideration protocols suit well in which application and can be a guide-line for the design of a more robust and efficient protocol. MATLAB simulations are performed to analyze and compare the performance of LEACH, multi-level hierarchal LEACH and multihop LEACH.Comment: NGWMN with 7th IEEE Inter- national Conference on Broadband and Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications (BWCCA 2012), Victoria, Canada, 201