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The motive of present paper was to test the predictability of equity fund performance on the basis of fund variables. In this respect, five equity fund variables were selected namely past fund performance, flow, expense ratio, age and size. The data of seventeen equity funds for the time period June 2010 to June 2017 was collected. Moreover, Arellano and Bond (1991) dynamic panel data approach was employed to examine the predictability of fund performance. Results indicated significant negative influence of past fund performance and expense ratio on future performance of equity funds, however, no significant influence of past fund flow, age and size on future performance of equity funds was found. Overall results suggest that investors can predict future performance of equity funds on the basis of past performance and expense ratio. Moreover, predictability of performance can help investors in making optimal investment decisions. This study is novel in its nature as it examined the predictability of Pakistani equity fund performance by using dynamic panel data approach. Hence the research can be extended in other types of fund operating in Pakistan.

This study examined the impact of reduction in energy poverty on environment. Energy poverty is defined in several ways like; percentage of household expenditure on energy uses or alternatively in terms of access to clean energy products and services such as electricity, natural gas and LPG etc. Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement (PSLM) data for 2013-14 is utilized to compute Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index. The index, based on data for different fuels for heating, lightening and cooking, is computed to assess incidence of energy poverty. The list of fuel includes firewood, coal, kerosene oil, Gas (Cylinder), Gas (Pipeline), electricity from regular distribution system of WAPDA and from Generators. Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI) is showing that 69.67 percent households are deprived of clean fuel for cooking and 47.11 percent are deprived of clean fuel for heating. However, for lighting only 9.04 percent households do not have access to clean source. Furthermore, study finds that CO2 emissions can be reduced significantly through improving access (access through subsidization, regulation and increasing supply) of low income group to the energy mix of high income group. If highest income groups’ energy mix is available to poor, for cooking and heating purposes, the emissions will decline to 755.869 metric ton (per month) from current of 2039.520 metric ton (Per month). Per household will also decline by 44.69 kgCo/kwh if highest income group energy mix is available to all households .

This study aim was to examine the impact of reward and motivation to the satisfaction of job in private schools Kohat. Questionnaire was used as tool for collection information. Sample was the employee employees of secondary schools. Sample size was 120. SSPS was used for analyzing information. The result showed the relationship among the variables. The management should make mandatory on the job training and follow reward ad motivation principles for satisfaction of employees’ jobs.

There has been Investigation of relationship among money supply, budget deficit and inflation in this research study. Data for the period 1990-2017 has collected from the state bank of Pakistan and World Bank economic indicators on their website. In analysis, we have used unit root test, regression analysis and co-integration test for applying to the information gathered through secondary resources. In findings, we have key outcomes that money supply and inflation have different effects on the fiscal deficit. Our result has supported a positive relationship in between fiscal deficit and money supply. We had also explored the negative relationship between inflation and fiscal deficit. This mention that government has to implement such policies, which can control the inflation and money, supply both for reduction in fiscal deficit. Increase in inflation, decrease in money supply and later increase in fiscal deficit make bad impact to the Economy of Pakistan.

In many developing countries, the problem of income inequality and unemployment is rising very fast while at the same time, most of the individuals living in these economies do not have access to basic necessities. Such a situation causes economic and social restlessness and calls for a change in economic strategies. For solutions, the concept of inclusive growth is emerging as a keynote discussion among economists around the world. Human and physical infrastructure is one of the strong candidates that can help fight against unemployment and poverty and takes the economy towards the road to inclusive growth. This paper examines their potential to contribute to more sustained and broadly based economic growth of Pakistan. Inclusive growth is measured by calculating the growth rate of human development index (HDI) based on UNDP’s (2011). Empirical findings of this study suggest that human and physical infrastructure positively and significantly affects inclusive growth. Thus, investment in human and physical infrastructure needs to be planned to support key growth corridors that foster economic advancements and help the masses to contribute to economic growth and benefit from it as well.

The strategic objective of e-government is to promote efficient provision of public services. This study explores the effect of e-government on economic growth. A macroeconomic production function is used to examine the impact of e-government on economic growth. The archive data of 147 nations across the world over the years of 2003 to 2012 is employed and OLS and IV econometric techniques are used. The results exhibit that an increase in e-government adaption leads to high economic growth. The empirical findings of this research are robust to various control variables, to endogeneity problem and to different specifications of the model.

This study aimed to investigate the role of the High performance work practices (HPWP) on Value Co creation (VCC) with mediating role of work engagement (WE). Primary data were collected based on 250 employees working in automobile sector. The data was analyzed using statistical tool like Mean, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), correlation and validity analysis in SPSS v.21 and AMOS v.21. The findings of the study disguised that high performance work practices is an important factor to value co creation hence work engagement also proved to be important indicator to boost practices of employees in organization. The data collected through on site survey technique. The sample was drawn from Pakistan especially from automobile sector. Implication is first, that organizations in addition to investing in different initiatives should also invest particularly for value co creation to achieve purpose through high performance work practices in automobile sector. Second, to advance effectiveness and acceptance of work engagement in organization, manager needs to ensure employee is integral part of organization which will enhance their practices and value co creation for customers.

The study investigates the association of educational expenditure and income inequality with economic growth in Pakistan, by using the annual time series data from 1980 to 2019. The ARDL bound testing co-integration approach confirms that there is long run relationship between the variables. The study includes economic growth as dependent variable whereas, education and income inequality as repressors. The results indicate that education is positively and significantly correlated with economic growth. While income inequality is negatively and significantly correlated with economic growth in long run and short run. According to the finding it is recommended that development in education sector is efficient policy to increase Economic growth and to improve the income distribution in Pakistan.

This paper examines how the economic growth of different sectors affects poverty in Pakistan uses the time series data over the period 1973-2016. The ARDL co-integration approach has been applied to investigate the impact of sectoral growth on aggregate as well as disaggregated poverty in the long run and short run. The results indicate that industrial growth reduces total, rural and urban poverty significantly while the performance of services sector affects the composition of poverty insignificantly. The agricultural sector growth has a negative impact on aggregate poverty while it has an insignificant impact on disaggregated poverty.

This paper critically evaluates the concept of Musharakah Mutanaqisah financing and its related issues. In recent years, Islamic banks and financial institutions have frequently practised Musharakah Mutanaqisah as an investment and financing tool, along with Muzarbah, Murabahah and Ijarah. Musharakah Mutanaqisah is a partnership contract between two parties, wherein one partner gradually buys the whole property. After the formation of partnership, the transaction starts and sale and purchase of the property take place between the partners. It is imperative that this buying and selling should not be stipulated in the partnership contract. Moreover, the buying and selling agreement must not be conditional to the partnership contract. The researcher concludes with a few suggestions and recommendations to improve and get acceptance of this product in future.

This study attempts to explain the factors of satisfaction in the patient's perspective from the private healthcare sector of Lahore. The data was collected from in-patients of eight major hospitals in Lahore city of Pakistan. The study distributed 450 questionnaires among patients of different hospitals for data collection and received 322 fully filled questionnaires for data analysis. The study applied different statistical tools to analyze the data. The findings show that among all six variables, physical facility is the most influential predictor of patient satisfaction in the private healthcare sector of Lahore. The analysis further explored that all hypotheses of the study are proved to be true and significant.

This study has chosen top three economies of the world to explore the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth by using annual data from 1985-2020. The results of ARDL approach shows that energy has a positive and significant impact on the economic growth of USA, China and Japan. Japan is the largest beneficiary in the short run as well in the long run, followed by USA and China.

This study investigates the income elasticity of health in rural areas of Pakistan. It was conducted during 2019-20 to find out the responsiveness of health expenses proportionate to the earnings of rural people of the country. Multistage sampling technique was used for data collection from 180 respondents from two districts, i.e., Toba Tek Singh district from Punjab province and Tando Allahyar district from Sindh province. The respondents were categorized into three income groups – low, medium, and high – and were interviewed to find out that what portion of income of each group is being directly or indirectly on their health and wellness. The findings show that the low, medium, and high-income groups were spending about 17.7, 7.7 and 4.2 percent of their income on health and wellness, respectively. Further, it was observed that with the increase of income, the low income group will spend another 8.8 percent on health as compared to the medium, and high-income groups, who will lower the expenses on health by 0.6 and 0.09 percent, respectively. Due to large family size i.e., 9.7 persons per family, most of them were unable to fulfill the basic nutritional requirements in daily food. Moreover, in case of emergency, low-income group either uses home-made medicines (totkas) or pays visits to the unauthorized doctors called hakeem. While medium and high-income groups prefer to visit the private hospitals, due to insufficient healthcare facilities at the public hospitals.

This study aims to analyze the impact of different deriving forces like trade balance, capital, inflation rate, exchange rate and government fiscal measures on economic growth of Pakistan during the period 1977 to 2019. The empirical results are tested through ARDL co-integration method which indicates that capital, inflation rate, exchange rate and tax revenues have significant long term and short term relationship with economic growth.

This research aims to investigate the nexus between urbanization environmental degradation and economic growth in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) economies. This relation is still under question. Some researcher shows positive affiliation of urbanization with economic growth and environmental degradation while some show negative. But truth is that urbanization environmental degradation and economic growth are correlated to each other. For the analysis, data is taken from the period 1990 to 2018. Two models are created the first model shows the urbanization nexus with economic growth and the second is showing the nexus of environmental degradation and economic growth. The GDP is the dependent variable in both model and independent variable are labor force participation rate, carbon dioxide emission, gross fixed capital formation, trade openness, exchange rate, school enrollment, real interest rate, urbanization growth, and poverty headcount. Annual data is collected from the world indicator file. To check the correlation between variables, panel co-integration analyses such as Pedroni co-integration test, and Kao residual co-integration tests are applied. Panel co-integration tests are employed on two models separately. Both FMOLS models estimated the relevance. A causality test is also applied. The concluding effect shows that in BRICS urbanization has a positive effect on economic growth and a negative effect of environmental degradation on economic growth. The current study base on the least considered variables panel cointegration test FMOLS technique is used.

Since the 1990s, developing countries shifted their trade policy from inward-oriented strategy to outward-oriented strategy because of the conditions imposed by international lending institutions for granting loans to developing countries. The current study aims to investigate the impact of trade liberalization on employment and wages within the 30 developing countries over the period 2000 to 2019. To investigate empirical connections between trade, employment and wages, reduced form equations of labor demand and wages have been devised. The study has applied Generalized Method of Moments estimation techniques to estimate labor demand and wage equations to tackle the problem of endogeneity. The empirical findings of the study predict that trade liberalization has significant adverse effect on both labor demand and wages. However, the magnitude of the influence of trade on both one is small. Similarly, wages, employment level, output and real exchange rate are affecting employment and wages significantly. While ILO ratifications are significant only when KOF trade globalization is used as measure of liberalization, and time trend is significant only when weighted tariff rate is used as a measure of liberalization. To craft a multilateral and effective policy development, both real output and workers’ skill should be the focus of economic managers of the developing economies to reap the benefits of trade liberalization.

Kasur is well-known for its enormous leather industry, however the city pays a high price in terms of water pollution as a result of this business. Water within a broad radius of this leather manufacturing sector has been designated unfit to drink. As a result, this contaminated water has a negative impact on human health. This research is a small attempt to investigate the problems produced by water contamination. Surveillance was carried out in Kasur for this aim, and the results were assessed. Both males and females had a high prevalence of morbidity from various diseases, according to the findings.

Determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) is the key area of research in development economics. Earlier studies did not give due weight to the segregation of analysis across economic, social, and institutional factors for FDI. This study specifically attempts to explore the intervening role of social and institutional factors which affects the relationship between economic factors and inward FDI. For this purpose, three segregate models relating to economic, social, and institutional factors along with a composite model comprised of all these factors are taken into consideration in this study. Panel data utilized is related to South Asian countries from 2008 to 2016. In the light of Breusch-Pagan LM Statistics, Pooled OLS estimates are preferred for analyses. This study leads to the conclusion that in segregation analysis economic factors and institutional factors have an important role in attracting FDI, but social factors have no significant role in this regard. The intervening role of social and institutional factors is not found in this study. The only factors which are recognized in the composite analysis are economic. Enlarged market size having an efficient financial market with no inflationary pressure is found to be an economic environment in the South Asian region which is helpful for attracting FDI. The rule of law is not found to be an effective characteristic for inward FDI.

This study examines the relationship between inflation, Money supply, interest rate and unemployment in Pakistan using annual time series data from 1987 to 2019. Inflation is used as the dependent variable and money supply (M2), unemployment and interest rate as the independent variable. Discount rate is used as the proxy of the interest rate. The results of ADF unit root test shows that variables have different order of integration. The study used ARDL cointegration approach to test the long run and short run for the existence among the variables. The results found that there is long run as well as short run relationship among the variables.

In this article the reader’s will able to read opinion and context regarding children of female prisoners in the prison and outside the prison regarding education with or mental health, which taken as the hidden consequences of the circumstances. The emphasis lies into the fact that a voice of gross attention with loud should be given by the civil society and social activists. This study encompasses the key issues regarding the children within jail or outside the jail of incarcerated mothers; the survey has been made for these children for opinion and condition analysis for the impact upon their lives of incarcerated mothers. The situation of these children is the ignorance is the blessing. Our concerns are vital that this vice of attention should be taken by all and sundry.

Tourism is the flourishing sector in Pakistan because there are multiple religious, archaeological and beautiful adventure places. This study explores the different determents of tourism demand based on the asymmetric effect of energy prices and the symmetric effect of the exchange rate, globalization, and governance during 1980-2020. The domestic pump diesel prices in liters have been used as the proxy to measure energy prices. The Non-linear ARDL econometric approach finds that positive shocks of energy prices decline tourism while negative shocks of energy prices increase tourism demand. While the deprecation in the exchange rate, massive globalization, and good governance significantly enhance tourism demand in Pakistan. The study recommends that Pakistan government should promote cheaper energy resources to promote tourism demand.

The paper examined the relationship between External debt and Foreign aid in the Economic Growth of Pakistan. We have used the data of all variables from 1980-2019.GDP has been used as a proxy variable in this study. The explanatory variables are a foreign direct investment, external debt, and foreign aid. Since we have time series data, the augmented Dickey-Fuller Unit Root test is used to ascertain stationarity. Some variables are stationary at a level, and some are stationary at the first difference, so we applied ARDL and found that foreign aid and foreign direct investment are positively related to growth. At the same time, external debt has shown a negative impact on the economic development of Pakistan.

This study explores the effectiveness of non-development and development expenditure's impact on economic growth. The researcher used gross domestic product growth as the proxy of economic growth, military expenditures that indicate the non-developmental expenditures, developmental expenditure, total expenditure by government and gross domestic savings. Time series data have been used from 1988 to 2020 in this study and the target country has Pakistan. In this paper, the Auto-Regressive Distribution Lag Model has been estimated to check the effectiveness and long-run relationship. The main findings suggest that a long-run relationship exists between non-development expenditure, development expenditure and economic growth. Development expenditure, non-development expenditure and savings have a positive and increasing impact on the economic growth of Pakistan. So, in Pakistan development expenditure and non-development expenditure both are equally important for economic growth.

The study empirically analyzes the impacts of public spending and efficiency of financial intermediaries on economic growth in selected five SAARC countries using panel data from 1994 to 2018. Financial intermediaries like banks provide different services to the community and earned valuable deposits. On the basis of deposits, it offers credit facility to the community and business units. Domestic credits to private sector and financial system deposit shows worth of financial intermediaries in the economy. Credit to private sector is important for private sector development and for consumer financing which increases aggregate demand hence economic growth. Similarly, financial system deposits (LNFSD) represents more reserves of financial institutions/system which shows more availability of loan lending facility for private sector/ investor which results in higher production/growth in the economy. Government expenditure is one of the prime tools of fiscal policy which shows important role in achieving the goals of growth and stability in the economy in many developing countries. When there is rise in government expenses, it results in creation of jobs, provision of better infrastructure and improvement in services by government in the economy.

The study investigates the impact of globalization and democracy on the aggregate level of social spending for Pakistan for the period 1972-2020. The investigation includes how governments react to the challenges of globalization with welfare policy decisions that are located more toward reducing cost ("efficiency theory") otherwise ensuring individuals' government assistance ("compensation theory"). Empirical evidence based on Johansen Cointegration and VECM indicate the long-run and short-run dynamics between globalization, democracy, and social spending. The normalized cointegrating results show that the globalization variables (trade and financial openness) are inversely related to social spending, reflecting the existence of the “efficiency thesis”, while democracy has a positive association with social spending. The other control variable results also indicate a significant impact on social spending, specifically debt service and inflation rate have a negative impact while the economic development and unemployment rate have a positive and significant relationship with social spending in the long run.

This study aims at evaluating the validity of the “Triple (Current Account, Budget & Financial) Deficit Hypothesis (TDH)” the extension of the “Twin Deficit Hypothesis (TDH)” for the of South Asian countries i.e., (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan & Sri-Lanka) by using the panel data for the era of 2000-2021. First, the stationarity is to be tested of the “Current Account Deficit (CAD)”, the “Budget Deficit (BD,)” and the “Financial Deficit (FD)”. However, the results show that although other variables are stationary at the 1st difference I(1) except one i.e., , the CAD is non-stationary at a level I(0). All variables, however, are stationary at the 1st difference. Furthermore, the co-integration test indicates that co-integration exists among the series means that long-term association is present among the variables. The findings of the “VECM Granger Causality Test” demonstrate the existence of a two-way causal link between CAD & BD and between CAD and Financial deficit which indicates that the improvement in the current account balance (CAB) while the fiscal adjustment is not totally controlled by policy and necessitates CAD adjustment, it also demands fiscal austerity. As a result, we can draw the conclusion that the "Triple Deficit Hypothesis [TDH]" holds to the South Asian region.

The main objective of this study is to estimate a significant model to forecast Pakistan’s yearly economic variables of imports and exports. The data have been collected from the World Bank website ranging from 1962 to 2020. Imports and Exports of Pakistan are observed and analyzed by using time series analysis techniques by utilizing the Box-Jenkins methodology and Vector autoregressive model through Eviews-10 software. These methods were used for analysis, estimation, and forecasting purposes. The empirical analysis involved using the ADF (Augmented Dickey-Fuller) unit root test to check the stationary of the data. We used multivariate and univariate time series models. Before forecasting we check the correlation among the variables and apply the VAR model. it checks the forecasting accuracy by using RMSE, and MAE. We conclude that VAR model is the best technique for the forecasting of imports and exports.

Infant mortality is a common problem of the developing countries. Though Pakistan has reduced the infants’ death number from 106 deaths in 1990 to 62 deaths in 2018 in every 1000 infants, still stands among the highest infant death rate countries in the world. The present study is an attempt to assess the role of mothers’ empowerment (measured with Women’s Empowerment Index), utilization of child healthcare services and demographics in the infant mortality rate in Pakistan. The convenient sample of 300 ever married women of reproductive age (21-49), having at least one child, was taken from three city districts of Punjab, Pakistan (viz., Multan, Khanewal, & Dera Ghazi Khan). The result of the Ordinary Least Squares technique indicated that two dimensions of women/mothers’ empowerment viz., economic and familial, mother’s age at marriage, mothers’ education, antenatal care, postnatal care, and vaccination status had negative impact on infants’ mortality rate in Pakistan. The recommendations have been given in the light of the results attained.

The world was running in the usual way that suddenly on 20 December 2019 two patients with a freaky disease came to Wuhan hospital in China. Initially, doctors did not take this disease seriously. However, with time, the number of patients with this disease increased. Then this disease outbreak all over China within 2 to 3 months condition which initiated in Wuhan city until March it engulfed entire China. All the big cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen Guangzhou, and Wuhan were completely shut down, and businesses of the people’s completely shut down. Colleges and Universities have been closed with no transportation including air transportation and no delivery system. In short, all the departments and institutions were badly suffered gradually. The whole of China was engulfed in this disease like a swamp. On April 23, China started normally working with the measurement by wearing masks, taking the initial COVID-19 test and keeping a distance of 1 meter from person to person. It was revealed that the disease spreads by touching, breathing and other things. The latter condition becomes airborne; therefore, all the possible measures were adopted to control the disease outbreak.

This study examines the existence of the Ricardian Equivalence Hypothesis (REH) in the combined case of Group of Seven (G7) and South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries. This study is done under the assumption that the combined case of developed and developing economies will give evidence of REH. A panel data set from 2001 to 2019 is utilized for seven variables; Disposable Income, Household Final Consumption Expenditure, Government Budget Deficit, General Government Gross Debt, General Government Total Expenditure, General Government Revenue, and Wealth. The stationarity of these variables has checked by five different unit root tests; IPS, Fisher and Choi based ADF, and Fisher and Choi based PP. In the light of the Hausman test, we have adopted the random effect model to precede Panel Least Square (PLS). After applying PLS, the Wald test has rejected all restrictions which were applied to prove the existence of REH in developed and developing economies. Results showed that fiscal policy should be one of the stabilization policies in this understudy economic world to control the revenues and expenditure side.

Due to technological improvement, there has been a significant and quick change in the patterns of all economic activity. Even for the cost-effective and efficient use of the other four components of production, such as labour, energy has become a significant issue (land, labor, capital, and organization). Due to the extreme use of energy, the global environment is deteriorating, and international economies are desiring an environmentally sustainable approach to economic growth. Using Annual data from 1981 - 2018, the current study tries to explore the influence of energy usage and environmental deterioration in Pakistan Economy. The stationarity is checked using the Augmented Dickey and Fuller unit root approach. Long-term relationships between variables are provided by the auto regressive distributive lag model. ECM calculates and displays changeable short-run behaviour. GNP and CO2 emissions have been employed as proxy variables for economic development and environmental damage, respectively. Export, GFCF, and population density are the additional factors utilised to further explain and analyse the link between variables. Export, GFCF, and CO2 have a significant influence on economic growth, however energy consumption and population have an unfavourable association with Pakistan's economic growth. ECM returns a positive and substantial value, indicating that if a shock to the independent variable happens, the equilibrium will diverge.

Foreign direct investment, commodity production sector, and inflation play an incredibly important part in the economic growth of any country developing nations, particularly. In developing countries like Pakistan, foreign direct investment is frequently regarded as a major component of economic progress. The agriculture sector in Pakistan is extremely important to the economy, contributing 18.9% of GDP and employing 42.3 percent of the workforce, and also Industry is regarded as the most important industry for economic development. In Pakistan, as in most emerging and developed countries, inflation is a big issue. The basic motive of this research is to investigate the effect of foreign direct investment, commodity production, and inflation on the GDP rate of growth in Pakistan, by taking time-series data from 1990 to 2019, by world development indicator, and economic surveys of Pakistan. GDP rate of growth is used as dependent while, FDI, commodity production, consumer price index, interest rate, Gross capital formation, and labor force participation rate are used as explanatory variables. Based on the unit root analysis, we applied Nonlinear Autoregressive distributed lag model. And the finding revealed that a positive shock in foreign direct investment and commodity production has a positive and significant impact on Pakistan's economy, but the negative shock has a negative but insignificant influence on the economic development of Pakistan. Although the consumer price index has a negative but significant impact on the GDP growth rate