In any economic system, be it a free market or a command economy, the elementary functions of production, distribution and consumption take place within the natural world. The natural world provides the raw materials and the energy inputs for the production process whereas production and consumption leave “residuals” or waste products which go back into nature. The manner in which the residuals are handled will infact tell us how they may lead to pollution or the degradation of the natural environment. (a) explains nature in its role as a product of raw materials and (b) explains what the impact of residuals is on the natural world. Therefore we can see that environmental economics draws from two angles. Primarily it is the study of waste flow management and secondly, it studies the impacts of human activity on environmental resources. Thus one’s misconception of environmental problems only being constrained to pollution are removed. Infact, environmental economics focuses not only on pollution oriented problems but also looks at issues such as habitat disruption caused by human activities in an economic system. A good example of this is a housing development scheme which will disrupt the natural habitat and at the same time bring an array of problems such as sanitation, house waste disposal, etc. Analysing the environment from the perspective of an economic system we have to establish how this
KEYWORDS: Environment, Economic Systems, pollution, nature, resources, environmental problems.
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Tariq Banuri, Shahrukh Rafi Khan and Moazam Mahmood (ed.), Just Development: Beyond Adjustment with a Human Face, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. 207. Price not mentioned. The Oxford series of books published on the occasion of the golden jubilee of Pakistan’s independence constitute a welcome and high quality addition to material on various facets of life in the country. “Just Development” reviews Pakistan’s development from the human angle and looks at the structural adjustment programme, debating whether it is possible to have “adjustment with a human face”. Perhaps the most enduring element of our development strategies has been the relegation of social objectives to low priority and the consequent neglect of social sectors. This has been as true of decades of high growth – 1960s and 1980s – as of those of low growth – 1950s, 1970s and 1990s. Why?
KEYWORDS: golden jubilee, Pakistan’s independence, constitute, human face, government, bureaucracy.
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S.M. Burke and Salim Al-Din Quraishi, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, his personality and his politics, Karachi, Oxford University Press pp 412 Rs. 495/-. A convincing vindication of the Quaid’s Conversion from Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity to founding father of Pakistan. A book which most Pakistanis have been waiting for for the past five years or so, has at last been published by The Oxford University Press, Karachi (1997) as part of their Jubilee Series. A dispassionate study of the Quaid’s life and his personality illustrates that he was a luminary in three different walks of life. Firstly, as one of undivided India’s renowned legal practitioners; secondly, one of it’s leading legislators and, thirdly, as one of it’s leading politicians. It is universally recognised that the Quaid attained not only world stature, but won a permanent place in world history. Through his dynamic and inspiring leadership, he not only won independence from the then British colonial rule, but had the sole distinction of altering the world map by carving into existence the largest Muslim state of its time in the comity of nations – bigger than the United Kingdom and France put together. It is the role of a leading politician which this latest publication principally deals with.
KEYWORDS: Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, personality illustrates, legal practitioners, legislators, politicians.
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Rafi Raza, (Ed.), Pakistan in Perspective, 1947-1997, Oxford University Press, 1997. pp. 320. This is undoubtedly a most useful, updated collection of articles on various aspects of the Pakistani canvas. It is a valuable contribution given the relative paucity of material and literature on such topics. Aside from the somewhat tedious chapter on foreign policy, tiresome by virtue mainly of its bulk (stretching over a total of about a hundred pages in its entirety), the articles make for interesting and refreshing reading for not merely the specialist but the layperson as well. If length is any indication of importance, then surely it is a case of misplaced priorities to have given so much space to a subject such as foreign policy and, in comparison, the pieces on such vitally crucial issues as population planning and human rights are allocated, for whatever reason, a considerably less quantum of space in the book.
KEYWORDS: Book review, Pakistan, economic development, human rights.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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