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Published:July - Dec 1997
Pakistan’s economic reforms that were set in motion in 1991 rest on
the tripod of privatisation, domestic deregulation and trade liberalisation. A
critical component for strengthening the reforms and improving their
effectiveness will be the availability and quality of human resources for
accelerating industrial growth.
This paper, therefore, attempts to:
a) Review the success of Pakistan's vocational and technical education
institutions in satisfying the market demand for various skills.
b) Based on these assessments, identify the key constraints to the
availability of technical skills and make recommendations on how the
government can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of training
arrangements.
KEYWORDS:
Technical training, vocational training, labour demand, workforce, manpower, public sector, public sector training.
JEL:
N/A.
Towards a Theoretical Framework for an Analysis of Corruption
Moazam Mahmud
Published:July - Dec 1997
This is a conceptual paper on the analytics of the phenomena of
economic corruption. And it is very much a working paper, begging
comments. The paper concentrates on what appears on first reflection a
redundant question -what is the impact of corruption? The almost knee jerk
answer is loss of income. However, when modelling economic corruption we
run into the problems of determining the questions of: loss of income for
whom - the principal, the agent, the state, the consumer, the economy? -
how? and by how much?
KEYWORDS:
Corruption, macroeconomy, macroeconomics, comprehensive model, analysis.
JEL:
N/A.
Governance in an International Institution - The World Bank and its Reorganisations
Sikander Rahim
Published:July - Dec 1997
The governance of an institution is normally partly ensured by other
institutions, which depend on yet other institutions for their governance.
But who ultimately guards the guardians? For the liberal electoral
democracies of Europe and America the answer that evolved from the
political thought of the eighteenth century and the limited liability joint
stock company of the nineteenth was, crudely put, checks and balances and
voters, who could be the electorate or shareholders. Its limitation is that it
presupposes a state and the right of the voters to vote in their own interest.
How, then, can good governance be ensured for international organisations,
especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, in which
the representatives of the developed countries hold the majority of the votes
on the Boards and are expected to cast them, not in their own immediate
interests, but in the long term interest of the developing countries that
borrow from these institutions?
KEYWORDS:
World Bank, governance, institutional governance, reorganisation, reform, internal organisation.
JEL:
N/A.
Child Workers in Hazardous Industries in Pakistan
Akmal Hussain
Published:July - Dec 1997
This paper is the first systematic attempt at understanding the
nature and extent of hazards faced by child workers in the construction and
related industries, which perhaps are not only growing more rapidly but
have far greater hazards than any other set of occupations in which children
are employed.
KEYWORDS:
Child labour, child worker, education, hazard, Pakistan, working conditions.
JEL:
N/A.
Published:July - Dec 1997
Pakistan experienced the reverberations starting in 1988 of the
changes that swept the Asian emerging markets. To create an investment
friendly environment the GoP adopted liberal economic policies of
deregulation, privatisation, opening of capital markets to foreigners,
liberalisation of foreign exchange regulations and dismantling of investment
control - policies that lead to a significant increase in direct and indirect
foreign investment in the country.
These changes resulted in a drastic increase in the financial assets of
Pakistan with stock market capitalisation rising from Rs.l88 bn in 1991 to
Rs.547 bn at present, daily trading volume improving from 2 mn shares in
1991 to 50 mn shares at present and number of listed companies rising
from 542 in 1991 to 788 at present.
KEYWORDS:
Capital markets, domestic market capitalisation, investment, mutual fund investment, Pakistan.
JEL:
N/A.
Published:July - Dec 1997
In 1995 the Republic of Korea (ROK) was officially admitted to the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This
organisation groups together industrially developed countries of the world.
Recently, the World Bank has also released a study of China that predicts
that China is going to become the second biggest economy in the next
fifteen years if its economic growth follows the pattern of the last fifteen
years. ROK is the only country from among the developing countries to join
the ranks of the developed industrialised countries in the last thirty years.
However, it is still a small country compared to China. Hence when China
completes its transformation into an industrialised country the whole world
will be affected.
How did South Korea achieve such an accelerated transition to
prosperity? What measures were adopted by the Chinese leadership that has
allowed China to grow so rapidly? There are many factors that have been
cited to explain Korea's miracle, and rapid Chinese growth. However, In the
following we will highlight the role that education, science and research and
development (R&D) have played in their success.
KEYWORDS:
South Korea, ROK, GDP, OECD, research and development, R & D, investment.
JEL:
N/A.
Published:July - Dec 1997
This article will attempt to answer the question why the
redistribution of land ownership (i.e. land reform) is important and even
necessary for our society's progress and development. Why there remains a
crying need to concretely study the question of agrarian land ownership and
all it implies in terms of political and economic power distribution and its
social fallout in the rural milieu. Let us begin with an examination of how
the present land ownership patterns originated and evolved.
A discussion of the pattern of agrarian land ownership must
necessarily take as its main focus the areas where agriculture is the mainstay.
That inevitably means the provinces of Punjab and Sindh. The other two
provinces, NWFP and Balochistan, with the exception of some relatively
limited areas where canal fed or barani cultivation exists, have economies
that are mixed pastoral/agricultural, an economic base reflective of their
surviving tribal structures.
KEYWORDS:
Land Reform, land ownership, agrarian reforms, Pakistan, economic distribution.
JEL:
N/A.
Published:July - Dec 1997
Child labour exists throughout the third world including Pakistan.
For some unknown reason, the Western Press has chosen to single out
Pakistan to decry the system. The May 1997 issue of the Readers’ Digest
carried a particularly vicious article entitled `No Life for a Child’ giving
harrowing tales of beatings and other forms of coercion to make little
children in Pakistan to work in factories. Advantage is taken of the fact that
there has been no census in the country for two decades to bloat the figures
of child labour. One estimate going the rounds is 15 million. But the more
popular figure is 8 million which both UNICEF and SAARC have adopted.
ILO produced a figure of 6.3 million till, in 1996 it sponsored a survey
which turned up the figure of 3.3 million. In a country with a population of
132 million, every man, woman and child of which is under a debt burden
of about Rs 13,021 per annum the figure of 3.3 million labouring children
should not take anyone by surprise. Not that this is any justification for
child labour.
KEYWORDS:
Child Labour, welfare, enforcement, ILO, UNICEF, social welfare, education.
JEL:
N/A.
Published:July - Dec 1997
Policy formulation and implementation are the chief, though not the
only, business of a modern government, implying exercise of its power. In a
democracy the people themselves grant permission to the government to
exercise power in their name. Thus through the democratic process power is
transformed into legitimate authority. However, there is a feeling that a
policy, formulated through due procedures at the highest echelons of the
government, is sometimes not implemented in the same spirit or in the
same way as was originally intended by the policy makers. Thus there If
need to locate and identify the points where such lapses take place.
KEYWORDS:
Policy formulation, policy implementation, political leadership, administrative leadership.
JEL:
N/A.
Note: How Does Environmental Economics Function?
Shamyla Chaudry
Published:July - Dec 1997
In economics we study how and why “people” whether they are
consumers, firms, non-profit organisations or government agencies make
decisions about the use of valuable limited resources. When studying the
environment from an economics perspective we are in fact primarily
focusing on how and why “people” make decisions that have environmental
consequences. Secondly, we focus on how we can manage institutions to
bring these environmental impacts more into balance with changing human
demands and the demands of the ecosystem itself.
If we follow this economic approach several answers emerge to the
basic question asked in environmental economics, that is “Why do people
behave in ways that cause environmental degradation?”
KEYWORDS:
Environmental resources, environmental economics, environmental impacts, Pakistan.
JEL:
N/A.