Regime-specific impact of financial reforms on economic growth in Pakistan

This study uses and proposes a new methodological approach to construct a financial liberalization index on the basis of the dynamic factor model technique. The resulting index is used to investigate the impact of the financial sector reforms in Pakistan on economic growth. Using the Markov regime-switching model over the period 1972–2015, the empirical results showed that the examined relationship is nonlinear, nonmonotonic, state-dependent, and better described by the two-state Markov switching model characterized by the high growth regime and low growth regime. Despite the positive impact of financial liberalization on economic growth in both the high and low growth regimes, financial liberalization relatively strongly affects real GDP growth in the high growth regime. The results further demonstrate that transition probabilities establish an inordinate episode of the low growth regime. Furthermore, the high growth regime is relatively short-lived than the low growth regime. Among the other variables, trade openness and physical capital stock have a positive impact on economic growth, while labor force and government expenditure exert a negative effect on economic growth. Several economic policies are proposed and discussed for better functioning of financial sector development in Pakistan.     

Evaluating barriers to implementing green supply chain management: An example from an emerging economy

Abstract

This study proposes a fuzzy-based VIKOR (VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje) framework for evaluating barriers to implementing green supply chain management (GSCM) in the context of an emerging economy. The methodology uses a mix method approach combining literature review and opinions of some selected managers from the plastic industry of Bangladesh to identify four main-barriers and twenty-five sub-barriers relevant to GSCM implementation. Fuzzy-VIKOR approach was applied to aid in the analysis of the barriers in the plastic industry of Bangladesh. The findings of the study show the order/rank of intensity and severity of the main-barriers to implementing GSCM practices in the plastic industry of Bangladesh as follows: ‘inadequate knowledge and support’, ‘insufficient technology and infrastructure’, ‘financial constraints and unsupportive organizational’ and ‘operational policies’. The results also show the rankings of the sub-barriers under each main barriers. This research contributes to the literature in a number of ways. First, it identifies multi-levels of barriers to GSCM implementation. Secondly, it identifies and proposes alternative action plans (strategies) to help mitigate and implement GSCM practices. Though this study has significant contributions, a number of limitations do exist. The barriers in this study were identified using the extant literature review and industrial managers’ opinions. A more scientific approach and empirical validation is required, especially in the plastic manufacturing industry of Bangladesh to identify more new challenging barriers. However, this study can provide managers with a better understanding of the barriers to implementing GSCM practices and motivate the researchers to further extend the investigation on the insights for developing strategic plans for implementing GSCM practices in the plastic industry of Bangladesh.     

GIS and development control system for a local authority in Malaysia

The process of development control involves a technique for the systematic compilation of expert quantitative analysis and qualitative assessment of project land use and property development viability, including its effect on the surrounding area, and the presentation of results in a way that enables the importance of the predicted results, and the scope of modifying or mitigating them to be properly evaluated by the relevant decision making body before a planning permission is rendered. Taking the local authorities in Malaysia as an example, this paper will discuss and demonstrate the development of a GIS database and its integration and application for development and building control. The first part of the paper examines the functions of local authorities particularly in the context of development control. In this study, the procedure involved in granting a planning permission as well as enforcement becomes the main focus because it determines the bulk of the system design. The study identifies seven sub-systems namely planning permission, building control, planning enforcement, geospatial database, information kiosk, document processing and presentation sub-systems. The system is developed using a combination of office automation, CAD, GIS, multimedia and other software packages. This paper will focus on the development of the GIS for the purpose of development control. The components of the GIS database include land information, buildings, existing developments, planning information, development plans, utilities, community facilities, transportation, environment and the socio-economy database. The GIS database will be used at every stage of development control, for example, in initial discussions, registration, invitation of objections, the development control process, the consideration by Technical Committee and the consideration by Planning Committee. It is anticipated that the GIS database could be used by many parties involved in the process as a reference point in evaluating a planning submission. Having access to the database will provide flexibility in assessing a proposed development and deciding on the overall urban growth management programme in the most cost-effective manner. The system will also provide transparency and consistency in the development control procedure.     

New Economic Policy and the Malaysian multiethnic middle class

Generally the processes of modernisation, industrialisation and urbanisation that took place especially after the National Economic Policy (NEP) was implemented in 1971, had transformed the economic structure and the Malaysian society. This transformation took place during an era of rapid economic growth and prosperity in Malaysia. One of the more important phenomena resulting from this transformation is the emergence, growth and expansion of the multiethnic middle class in the country, but particularly the Malay middle class. The emergence of this multiethnic middle class is significant economically, socially and politically. The growth and expansion of this middle class shows that it is very much a dynamic entity. It also shows that the class has yet to consolidate. This paper briefly traces the emergence and growth of the Malaysian multiethnic middle class, followed by a discussion on the roles they play in effecting changes in the Malaysian society.     

Two-stage cluster sampling with hybrid ranked set sampling in the secondary sampling frame

In surveys of natural resources in agriculture, ecology, fisheries, forestry, environmental management, etc., cost-effective sampling methods are of major concern. In this paper, we propose a two-stage cluster sampling (TSCS) in integration with the hybrid ranked set sampling (HRSS)—named TSCS-HRSS—in the second stage of sampling for estimating the population mean. The TSCS-HRSS scheme encompasses several existing ranked set sampling (RSS) schemes and may help in selecting a smaller number of units to rank. It is shown both theoretically and numerically that the TSCS-HRSS provides an unbiased estimator of the population mean and it is more precise than the mean estimators based on TSCS with SRS and RSS schemes. An unbiased estimator of the variance of the proposed mean estimator is also derived. A similar trend is observed when studying the impact of imperfect rankings on the performance of the TSCS-HRSS based mean estimator.     

Fuzzy multi-objective optimization for optimum allocation in multivariate stratified sampling with quadratic cost and parabolic fuzzy numbers

This article deals with the uncertainties in a multivariate stratified sampling problem. The uncertain parameters of the problem, such as stratum standard deviations, measurement costs, travel costs and total budget of the survey, are considered as parabolic fuzzy numbers and the problem is formulated as a fuzzy multi-objective nonlinear programming problem with quadratic cost function. Using α-cut, parabolic fuzzy numbers are defuzzified and then the compromise allocations of the problem are obtained by fuzzy programming for a prescribed value of α. To demonstrate the utility of the proposed problem a numerical example is solved with the help of [LINGO User?s Guid. Lindo Systems Inc., 1415 North Dayton Street, Chicago,Illinois-60622, (USA), 2013] software and the derived compromise optimum allocation is compared with deterministic and proportional allocations.     

Town planning in Sweden: National officials versus local politicians

With strong central government traditions, Sweden has developed goal-oriented normative planning. At urban level, such planning raises many problems. This article discusses some of these problems from the three principal aspects of planning, namely the ideological, methodological and organizational aspect. The study is based on an extensive questionnaire and oral interviews among municipal planners in leadership positions in three middle-sized municipalities, namely Borås, Umeå and Västerås. The ideological aspect is discussed with reference to restrictions on urban planning arising as a result of decisions made by private enterprises and due to the interaction between the central and municipal government. The article goes on to describe the methods planners have developed to plan for land-use, resource allocation, housing and other sectoral activities and major defects in the planning system. Finally, the article discusses various problems faced by the municipal government whose departmental organization facilitates the administration of community services but cannot adequately deal with the increasing number of planning functions which are often interdepartmental in nature.     

A new adaptive EWMA control chart using auxiliary information for monitoring the process mean

The adaptive memory-type control charts, including the adaptive exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) and cumulative sum (CUSUM) charts, have gained considerable attention because of their excellent speed in providing overall good detection over a range of mean shift sizes. In this paper, we propose a new adaptive EWMA (AEWMA) chart using the auxiliary information for efficiently monitoring the infrequent changes in the process mean. The idea is to first estimate the unknown process mean shift using an auxiliary information based mean estimator, and then adaptively update the smoothing constant of the EWMA chart. Using extensive Monte Carlo simulations, the run length profiles of the AEWMA chart are computed and explored. The AEWMA chart is compared with the existing control charts, including the classical EWMA, CUSUM, synthetic EWMA and synthetic CUSUM charts, in terms of the run length characteristics. It turns out that the AEWMA chart performs uniformly better than these control charts when detecting a range of mean shift sizes. An illustrative example is also presented to demonstrate the working and implementation of the proposed and existing control charts.