A key element of the Doha Round of trade negotiations is liberalisation of trade in industrial products, commonly known as non-agricultural market access (NAMA). These negotiations are important for developing countries as these will determine the market access opportunities through which they...

Trade and growth theories generally predict a positive relationship between openness to international trade and economic growth. There are a number of channels through which openness is thought to influence economic growth. First, a liberal trade regime enhances efficiency through greater...

This paper examines the scale and scope efficiency of the Agricultural Development Bank of Pakistan. Using the production approach to measuring bank outputs and costs, a translog cost function is estimated to provide an assessment of the bank’s scale and scope efficiency, and to quantify the...

Interest spread of the Pakistan’s banking industry has been on the rise for the last two years. The increase in interest spread discourages savings and investments on the one hand, and raises concerns on the effectiveness of bank lending channel of monetary policy on the other. This study...

This paper examines the efficiency of the large scale manufacturing sector of Pakistan using the stochastic production frontier approach. A stochastic production frontier is estimated for two periods—1995-96 and 2000-01—for 101 industries at the 5-digit PSIC. The results show that there has...

This paper explores the role of public investment in the process of economic growth, in the context of Pakistan’s economy, using the vector autoregressive approach (VAR). Based on theoretical considerations, the model also includes private investment and public consumption besides public...

This paper analyses monetary policy transparency of the central bank (SBP) using the Eijffinger and Geraats (2006) index. The results show that the SBP scores 4.5 out of 15, which is lower than any of the central banks’ score in Eijffinger and Geraats (2006). The SBP is completely opaque on...