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Private School Participation in Pakistan
Quynh T. Nguyen and Dhushyanth Raju
Published:Jan - June 2015
This study uses multiple rounds of national household sample surveys to examine the extent and nature of private school participation at the primary and secondary levels in Pakistan. Today, one fifth of children in Pakistan—or one third of all students—attend private school. Private school students tend to come from urban, wealthier, and better-educated households than government school students and especially out-of-school children. The characteristics of private school students relative to their government school peers and the former’s composition differ in important ways across Pakistan’s four provinces. Private school participation among children varies largely from one household to another rather than within households, and to a greater extent than government school participation. Private schooling is spatially concentrated, with a few districts (situated mainly in northern Punjab) accounting for most private school students. The spatial distributions of private school supply and participation are strongly correlated. In the 2000s, private school participation rates grew in Punjab, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and across socioeconomic subgroups, contributing in particular to the growth in overall school participation rates for boys, urban children, and rich children. Nevertheless, the composition of private school students has become more equitable, driven mainly by Punjab, where the shares of private school students from rural and nonrich households have risen.
KEYWORDS:
Private schools,
private school participation,
Pakistan,
household surveys.
JEL:
I25,
I21.
Migration, Remittances, and Household Welfare: Evidence from Pakistan
Masood Sarwar Awan, Mohsin Javed, and Muhammad Waqas
Published:Jan - June 2015
This study examines the costs and household-level benefits of overseas migration in Toba Tek Singh, Pakistan. A household survey was conducted to assess the transaction costs associated with the transfer of remittances and the sources used to finance overseas migration. We also carry out a propensity-score matching exercise, which reveals that overseas migration has substantial benefits as measured by migrants’ consumption levels, their expenditures on health, education, and vehicles, and the level of household savings. Policy options to facilitate migration and the transfer of remittances include (i) establishing technical training institutions to help workers upgrade their skills, (ii) information campaigns on the migration process and opportunities available, (iii) setting up institutions to provide loans for potential migrants, (iv) reducing money transfer costs through formal channels, and (v) building awareness of the Pakistan Remittance Initiative.
KEYWORDS:
International migration,
remittances,
Pakistan.
JEL:
F24,
F22,
I30.
Implications of Public External Debt for Social Spending: A Case Study of Selected Asian Developing Countries
Sadia Shabbir and Hafiz M. Yasin
Published:Jan - June 2015
For developing countries with budgetary and balance-of-payments gaps to meet, maintaining large stakes of external debt is not free of cost. Highly indebted countries have to set aside a sizeable fraction of their scarce resources to service their debt, which naturally affects their development spending in general and allocations for the social sector in particular. This study examines the behavior of seven developing Asian countries and analyzes the impact of public external debt on social sector spending. The panel dataset includes Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Philippines, and Indonesia, and spans the period 1980–2010. Our empirical analysis is based on three interrelated equations for different spending categories, which are estimated using the general method of moments. The study’s results confirm the common wisdom that outstanding external debt and its servicing liability have an adverse impact on public spending, particularly on social sector spending. This suggests that developing countries need to mobilize their own resources and minimize their dependence on external borrowing as far as possible.
KEYWORDS:
Public debt outstanding,
debt servicing,
fiscal deficit,
current account deficit,
social sector development.
JEL:
H69.
Relative Factor Abundance and Relative Factor Price Equality in Punjab
Resham Naveed
Published:Jan - June 2015
This study tests the relative factor price equality across districts in Punjab using the methodology developed by Bernard, Redding, and Schott (2009) and data from the Census of Manufacturing Industries for 2000/01 and 2005/06. The results indicate the absence of relative factor price equalization due to the uneven distribution of factors in the province. Nonproduction (white-collar) workers) are relatively scarce in Punjab, which results in a wage premium for this type of labor. The study adjusts for worker quality by using a Mincerian wage equation as worker quality could explain the wage differential between white-collar and blue-collar workers. However, this exercise yields similar results, implying that factors are distributed unevenly across the districts of Punjab even after controlling for worker quality differences.
KEYWORDS:
Sector price,
wages,
equality,
Punjab,
Pakistan.
JEL:
E24.
The Effectiveness of Corporate Governance in Constraining Earnings Management in Pakistan
Aysha S. Latif and Fahad Abdullah
Published:Jan - June 2015
Although firms’ annual reports are supposed to provide an unbiased and accurate picture of their financial position, managers may be induced to engage in earnings management in order to circumvent expectations. Such incentives can take the shape of stock prices, management incentives, or debt covenants. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of three attributes of corporate governance in constraining earnings management practices. These include board characteristics, audit committee characteristics, and ownership structure. Based on a sample of 120 nonfinancial firms listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange during 2003–12, we find that audit committee independence is negatively associated with earnings management, while CEO duality and institutional shareholding is positively associated with earnings management. Moreover, the effectiveness of governance mechanisms in constraining earnings management practices differs across high- and low-growth firms.
KEYWORDS:
Earnings management,
financial statements,
corporate governance,
board characteristics.
JEL:
G34.
An RCA Analysis of Textiles and Clothing in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh
Khurram Shahzad
Published:Jan - June 2015
This study focuses on the revealed comparative advantage analysis for Clothing and Textile sectors of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. We have applied the Balassa’s (1965) Index for the analysis. The revealed comparative advantage has been analyzed in two different ways: one static on the year 2010 and the other one dynamic based on 1980, 1990, 2000 and 2010. For the dynamic analysis, the average of the three previous years from 2010 were taken and used for revealed comparative advantage. The results show Pakistan’s highest revealed comparative advantage for textiles over both India and Bangladesh. India has revealed a comparative disadvantage in textile in competition of Pakistan and Bangladesh. For clothing, Bangladesh has very dominant revealed comparative advantage when competing with Pakistan and India. Dynamic revealed comparative advantage indicates Pakistan has been gaining a comparative advantage in textiles since 1980 but with a declining percentage of textile export. Bangladesh has significantly gained a comparative advantage in clothing since the 1980s.
KEYWORDS:
Revealed Comparative Advantage,
Textile,
Clothing,
Product Positioning,
Balassa Index,
Pakistan.
JEL:
F14,
F15,
F10,
O57.