Promotion of Intra-regional trade is the most important economic justification for regional economic blocs. This paper examines such prospects in the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO) region, a grouping of ex-RCD and Central Asian States. It is shown that the progress is extremely slow and...

After half a century of development experience, one-third of the population of Pakistan today is condemned to struggle below the poverty line, howsoever defined. In absolute terms, this size of the population of the poor is larger than the total population of [West] Pakistan at the time of...

The debt of the nation comprises two parts, the external debt and the internal debt. After rapidly accumulating arrears of external debt in the post-sanctions period, Pakistan has had to seek re-scheduling of her external debt as part of a financing and reform package negotiated with the IMF....

This paper discusses existing scenario of informal sector employment and socio-economic challenges faced by informal worker in search of “decent work.” We supplement the Labour Force Surveys (LFS) with a socioeconomic survey in five towns of Lahore to profile home-based workers, street...

The Iqbal Memorial Lecture was instituted in 1994 when the Pakistan Society of Development Economists (PSDE) celebrated the completion of a decade of steady progress. A brief announcement stated: “The Iqbal Memorial Lecture attributed to the national poet [Emphasis added], Allama Muhammad...