Quality of life and its predictors among Pakistani head of household in district Abbottabad,Pakistan

Quality & Quantity - This study aimed to measure the quality of life (QOL) and its predictors among male and female heads of household in Pakistan. A population-based cross-sectional study in...     

Shrinkage Estimation Strategies in Generalised Ridge Regression Models: Low/High-Dimension Regime

In this study, we suggest pretest and shrinkage methods based on the generalised ridge regression estimation that is suitable for both multicollinear and high-dimensional problems. We review and develop theoretical results for some of the shrinkage estimators. The relative performance of the shrinkage estimators to some penalty methods is compared and assessed by both simulation and real-data analysis. We show that the suggested methods can be accounted as good competitors to regularisation techniques, by means of a mean squared error of estimation and prediction error. A thorough comparison of pretest and shrinkage estimators based on the maximum likelihood method to the penalty methods. In this paper, we extend the comparison outlined in his work using the least squares method for the generalised ridge regression.     

The demand for medical care services: evidence from Kuwait based on households’ out-of-pocket expenses

This article used a data set containing information on 1267 households from Kuwait to investigate the determinants of demand for medical care services by examining households’ out-of-pocket expenses. To deal with the problems associated with households’ health expenditure data, a two-part model (TPM) was estimated. Given Kuwait’s demographic composition, the model was estimated for full sample, nationals only and expatriates only. Prior to estimating the model, tests were conducted to select a transformation that reduces problems associated with heteroscedasticity and non-normality of the errors. In addition, tests were performed to determine if differences in the estimated coefficients across population groups were statistically significant.     

The effects of regional trade integration and renewable energy transition on environmental quality: Evidence from South Asian neighbors

Improving environmental quality across South Asia has become one of the utmost important policy agendas of the concerned governments. The susceptibility of the majority of the South Asian countries to multifaceted climate change adversities has motivated the need to identify the factors that can function to ensure environmental sustainability across South Asia. Although several studies have highlighted the importance of globalization and cleaner energy use in tackling the environmental degradaton issues of the South Asian countries, very little is known regarding the impacts of regional trade and renewable energy transition in this regard. Hence, this paper aims to scrutinize the effects of enhancing intra-regional trade integration and undergoing renewable energy transition on per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the context of six South Asian nations between 1990 and 2016. The results from the recently developed cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag regression approach, accounting for cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity issues, reveal that facilitating trade among the South Asian neighbors reduces carbon emissions in both the short and long run. Moreover, enhancing the share of renewable energy in the aggregate energy consumption figures is also found to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in both the short and long run. Furthermore, both regional trade integration and renewable energy transition are found to jointly reduce carbon dioxide emissions in South Asia. The results also authenticate the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis, while financial development and urbanization are found to boost carbon dioxide emissions only in the long run.     

Market risk disclosures,corporate governance structure and political connections: evidence from GCC firms

This paper investigates the joint effect of political connections, in the form of the royal family member on board, and corporate governance on the market risk disclosures of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) financial firms from 2007 to 2011. Previous research suggest that politically connected firms reduce the level of transparency in the GCC. However, we find that better corporate governance improves transparency and can be used as an effective tool in curbing the potentially adverse impact of politically connected board members on firms’ transparency. Our results have important implications for policy makers and can be generalized to other emerging markets.     

Towards an integrated model for the transference of environmental responsibility

This research explores how environmental responsibility transfers to others. Although environmental responsibility is one of the most debated topics in environmental management literature, a framework describing how a teacher's environmental responsibility shapes the student's environmental responsibility is still lacking. Adopting emotional contagion theory as a lens, the paper addresses this issue via the mediation of emotional contagion and the moderation of a teacher's environmental concern. Based on a survey of teachers and students (N = 283) conducted in Pakistan, our findings provide evidence that a teacher's environmental responsibility can better transfer to students via emotional contagion. Additionally, our data establish that the transference of environmental responsibility from teachers to students via emotional contagion is more effective when the teacher has a high level of environmental concern than when he or she has a low level of environmental concern. Finally, the authors discuss the implications for policy in detail.     

Credit Conditions in Pakistan: Supply Constraints or Demand Deficiencies?

This paper attempts to pin down the key drivers of demand for and supply of real private sector credit in Pakistan. I use both the equilibrium and disequilibrium econometric frameworks, specifically tackling the issue of lack of consistency and/or efficiency of joint estimators in the former via the three‐stage least squares technique. On the demand side, I find that higher economic activity provides stimulus to credit whereas inflation dampens it. The stock market seems to play a dual role: as a source of alternative financing, a bullish market negatively impacts credit while, as an indicator of economic expectations, it provides a positive impetus. On the supply side, banks' lending capacity is found to be the major driver of credit while government borrowing has a crowding‐out effect. Pakistan currently faces supply constraints, which might put an additional check on capacity utilization by firms, thus damaging growth prospects. The results have important policy implications.     

Macroeconomic Volatility, Trade and Financial Liberalization in Africa

This paper examines the effects of financial and trade liberalization on growth volatility of real output and consumption in Africa. Our results suggest trade liberalization is associated with greater output and consumption growth volatility while financial liberalization increases the efficacy of consumption smoothing and stabilizes income and consumption growth. In addition, we find financial market depth and institutional quality operate jointly with trade and financial openness to reduce volatility in output and consumption growth. There is also evidence that good institutions which foster low inflation levels and volatility promote consumption and output growth stability.