Human capital inequality and income inequality: testing for causality

This study investigates the causal relationship between human capital inequality and income inequality in case of Pakistan. The annual time series data ranging from 1973 to 2009 is used for econometric analysis. Johanson co-integration and Granger Causality tests are used to confirm the existence of long run relationship and the causal relationship between human capital inequality and income inequality. The results indicate that there is positive relationship between the two types of inequalities in the long run. The estimates of causality test indicate that income inequality causes the human capital inequality but human capital inequality does not cause income inequality. Policy initiatives to reduce income inequality may empower people economically to avail skill building opportunities and accumulate their human capital through access to educational services.     

Epidemiological patterns of suicide terrorism in the civilian Pakistani population

In this study, we assessed the epidemiological patterns of suicide terrorism in the civilian population of Pakistan. Information about suicide terrorism-related events, deaths and injuries was extracted from the South-Asian Terrorism Portal (SATP) for the period from 2002 to October 2009. Of 198 events, civilians were involved in 194 events. Civilians accounted for 74.1% (N?=?2017) of those who died and 93.8% (N?=?6129) of those who were injured. In nine districts, mortality rates were more than one death per 100,000 inhabitants per year. The yearly trend showed a shift of attack targets from foreigners and sectarian targets in 2002-2005 to security forces or general public in 2006-2009. Attacks on public installations (mosques) or political gatherings resulted in a significantly greater (P?≤?0.02) number of deaths (22 vs. 8) and injuries (59 vs. 24) per event compared with security installations. These results show that prevention might focus on political negotiation with armed groups and that appropriate measures should be taken to protect mosques and political gatherings.     

Mixture of MLP-experts for trend forecasting of time series: A case study of the Tehran stock exchange

A new method for forecasting the trend of time series, based on mixture of MLP experts, is presented. In this paper, three neural network combining methods and an Adaptive Network-Based Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) are applied to trend forecasting in the Tehran stock exchange. There are two experiments in this study. In experiment I, the time series data are the Kharg petrochemical company’s daily closing prices on the Tehran stock exchange. In this case study, which considers different schemes for forecasting the trend of the time series, the recognition rates are 75.97%, 77.13% and 81.64% for stacked generalization, modified stacked generalization and ANFIS, respectively. Using the mixture of MLP experts (ME) scheme, the recognition rate is strongly increased to 86.35%. A gain and loss analysis is also used, showing the relative forecasting success of the ME method with and without rejection criteria, compared to a simple buy and hold approach. In experiment II, the time series data are the daily closing prices of 37 companies on the Tehran stock exchange. This experiment is conducted to verify the results of experiment I and to show the efficiency of the ME method compared to stacked generalization, modified stacked generalization and ANFIS.     

Improving candy industry competitiveness: Retailers’ perception regarding customer satisfaction

This study aims to classify service quality elements in candy industry in order to determine their instrumentality to customer satisfaction. To address this purpose, a Fuzzy Kano questionnaire was distributed to 512 major retailers of candy products of four predominant candy companies in Iran. Subsequently, we calculated satisfaction increment index (SII) and dissatisfaction decrement index (DDI) for each of the quality elements. Brand name and quality are considered as must-be elements, while availability of credit purchases is considered as indifferent element by the majority of retailers. Eight out of 24 studied elements are found to be considered as attractive elements by majority of customers. Regular visits element ranks first in terms of satisfaction increment index (SII). This paper provides helpful insight for marketers to prioritize improvement of different quality elements. Therefore, this paper helps organizations to perceive their customers needs more thoroughly and improve their customer satisfaction policy.     

Changes in the Public Accounts Committee of a Less Developed Democratic Country: A Field Study

This paper complements prior studies on the public accounts committees (PACs) by considering the notions of ‘agency’ and ‘structure’ of institutional theory in tandem in understanding the changes in structures and activities of the PAC of a less‐developed democratic country – Bangladesh. While prior studies examined ‘external’ institutional pressures on the development and operation of the PAC in various settings, the role of internal and external institutional agents in this context has not been their primary focus. Our empirical evidence from a qualitative field study indicates that over the past two decades, Bangladesh's PAC underwent significant changes to its internal governance structures and administrative processes. While these changes were indirectly driven by pressures from international donor agencies, PAC members and the national audit office played a key role as institutional agents in initiating and institutionalising the changes in PAC governance and operation.     

Political institutions and government spending behavior: theory and evidence from Iran

This study examines how the quality of political institutions affects the distribution of the government budget in Iran. We first introduce a mechanism through which democracy can shift government expenditure from national defense (military) to productivity-enhancing public spending (e.g., education). Using impulse response functions and a variance decomposition analysis on the basis of a vector autoregressive (VAR) model, our results imply that the response of military spending to an improvement (a deterioration) of democratic institutions is negative (positive) and statistically significant, whereas that of education spending is positive (negative) and significant. Our results are robust to other indicators of political institutions, different orderings of variables in the VAR, and alternative specifications of government spending categories.     

Managerial perspectives on drivers for and barriers to sustainable supply chain management implementation: Evidence from New Zealand

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that drive or prevent companies' implementation of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices. To this end, we interviewed 29 senior managers from 23 New Zealand‐based companies. The key reported drivers were customer expectation, top management commitment, moral and ethical values of managers, reputation management, and economic and operational benefits. Conversely, cost concerns, strategic and structural restraints, supplier and customer issues, and a lack of effective regulations were cited as critical obstacles to SSCM implementation. Thus, the evidence from our findings provides support for both instrumental and normative logics for SSCM implementation. The findings further indicate that, in general, instrumental and normative logics are congruent; however, varied tensions arise when managers seek to simultaneously address competing yet desirable SSCM aspects. Accordingly, we argue that it is imperative to understand, work through, and manage such tensions as balancing divergent sustainability aspects holds considerable potential for successful SSCM implementation.     

Comparing the technical efficiency of farms benefiting from different agricultural interventions in Kenya's drylands

Farmers in Kenya's drylands have difficulty accessing farm production resources and in consequence farm productivity is low. It is therefore important to find strategies for improving access to these scarce resources to help farmers use them efficiently. This paper analyses and compares the technical efficiency of five groups of small farms affected by five different agricultural interventions. The aim of the study was to identify intervention strategies that significantly improve farm efficiency. Data envelopment analysis was used to compute farm-level average technical efficiencies for each of the intervention groups. The results showed that average technical efficiency was highest for the farms that had participated in an irrigation intervention. The findings suggest that the strategies promoted by this intervention, such as access to irrigation, inputs and markets, have the most significant effect on farm efficiency.     

The spirit of capitalism as key to solving for an explicit Ramsey saddle path

This paper presents a version of the Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans model （1965） with an explicit equation for the saddle path, starting from a utility function describing preferences for consumption and savings. Such a maximizing criterion including the flow of saving formalizes the concept of Max Weber＇s spirit of capitalism and makes the model similar to the one of ZOU （1994）, except that his specification includes the capital stock instead. Not only does the presented model preserve the long-run implications on growth of countries, it also features an interesting application of the Pontryagin＇s Maximum principle, with further interpretation and results to analyze.     

Role of tariffs,imports substitution and investment efficiency in economic growth of Pakistan

Quality & Quantity - This paper explores the impact of tariffs, imports substitution and investment efficiency on economic growth in Pakistan. For this purpose, secondary data was collected...