Pakistan Journal of Applied Economics

1-29

Authors: Syed Ashraf WASTI & Minhaj Uddin SIDDIQUI

This paper quantifies the level of development of districts of Pakistan using 33 Indicators and the latest published information, Three techniques viz; Z-SUM, Taxonomic Distance and Weighted Factor Score are employed to rank districts. The findings indicate significant inter district and intra-provincial differences in the level of development. We find pockets of developed and under developed regions in all the four provinces of Pakistan, The predominant share of the Punjab population lives in better conditions (top quartile). The share of Sindh, NWFP and Baluchistan in the backward districts (bottom quartile) greater than their provincial population share.

49-64

Authors: FATIMA & Shaista ALAM & Muhammad Sabihuddin BUTT*

Developments in the theory of International trade and economic growth have identified a number of channels through which productivity (TFP) and output levels (GOP), representing economic growth are related to export growth. Although. this kind of relationship has been studied by a number of researchers, few have Included foreign economic performance in their empirical models. The primary innovation of the current study. is to make estimates of causal relations between exports and domestic output (or domestic TFP) more reliable. This inclusion also allows us to observe the impact of changes in foreign economic performance in Pakistan's export, output, and productivity.

85-102

Authors: Uzma IRAM & Ambreen FATIMA & Muhammad Sabihuddin BUTT*

Health is an important form of human capital. Microeconomics analyses suggest that health of the labour force makes an important contribution to productivity and income. Following the argument of Weil (2001), this study analyzes the possible links between economic growth and health for Pakistan. Thus the main goal of the study is 10 empirically investigate the importance of health as a direct and indirect cause of Pakistan's economic growth during 1960 - 2000. This is achieved by using VECM approach. The findings indicate that although growth tends to significantly improve health status in Pakistan but health is not Granger causing economic growth directly. There is, however, an indirect causal effect of health on the economic variables that could affect the process of economic growth in Pakistan (labour force. physical capital stock and human capital stock). Therefore, the study concludes that health is an important determinant of higher growth and a key 1001 available to policy-makers. These results would have important practical implications for public policy in Pakistan by providing policy-makers with a better technical understanding of development-related factors that are derived from the long-term changes in the health of the population.

123-141

Authors: Mohammad AFZAL

The impact of income, real exchange rate, Imports prices and foreign exchange reserves on import demand in Pakistan for the period 1980 to 2008, is addressed in this paper. Income turned out to be the most importnant factor in determining the import demand in the traditional econometric methodology. Long-run relationship exist between imports and real effective exchange rate. There is a uni-directional causality from imports to income and from foreign exchange reserves to imports. and bi-directional causality between import prices and imports. Pakistan's economy suffers from prominent and perplexing macroeconomic imbalances. Adherence to fiscal discipline is expected to ease macroeconomic malaise in the country.