Pakistan Journal of Applied Economics

91-143

Authors: Shahid N. ZAHID & Syed Sajjad HYDER

The main concern of this paper is the effect of relative price changes on the agricultural sector during 1973-84. Various terms of trade indices have been calculated. The first is the ratio of the prices received by agriculture for its produce to the prices paid by agriculture for consumer goods. The second is the ratio of the prices received for agricultural output to prices paid for agricultural inputs. Both these indices have been calculated using domestic and international prices. Adjustment have also been made to account for changes in per capita incomes overtime. To analyse regional differences in the terms of trade, indices have been calculated at both the national and provincial levels. Two important conclusions have emerged from the results. First, there is not much difference between the term. of trade under regulated (pre-1977) and de-regulated (post-1977) price regimes. Second, regional inequalities in the agricultural sector have not reduced significantly over the period under consideration.

163-178

Authors: Pradurnna B. RANA*

Fueled by the adverse conditions in the current international economic environment, the debate concerning the relative merits of development strategies based on import-substitution or export-oriented policies, is starting anew. This paper re-estimates Feder's (1982) model using data from fourteen Asian LDCs during 1965·1982 and finds that, although the social marginal factor productivities in the export sector declined significantly in the post-1973 period providing some support for the elasticity pessimism argument, they were, nevertheless, higher than in the non-export sector. This suggests that despite the deterioration of the international economy, reallocation of the export sector from the non-export sector could have increased growth rates.

207-215

Authors: Eshya MUJAHID-MUKHTAR & Hanid MUKHTAR

Nagy's estimation reveals a very high rate of return to research and extension in Pakistan's agriculture. This work demonstrates that this was due mainly to a mis-specified model, with the research and extension variable picking up the effect of omitted variables, namely water and fertilizer. Due to their importance in agriculture, it was not surprising to note that the inclusion of water and fertilizer results in a considerably lower rate of return to research and extension than shown by Nagy . at times even pushing it to a negative value.