Does inflation bias stabilize real growth? Evidence from Pakistan

The motive of a typical discretionary central banker to accommodate excess inflation (inflation bias) is either to stabilize real growth or to spur it beyond natural rate. To what extent inflation bias helps to materialize this intention warrants empirical investigation. A more direct empirical probe into this issue, however, requires observable inflation bias indicators, which we model through desirable and threshold inflation rates as well as their respective society’s preferences. While examining the effects of inflation bias for a typical case of the discretionary monetary policy strategy of Pakistan, we found that contrary to the desired boost/stabilization in real growth, the policy (via. inflation bias) produced counterproductive results. Inflation bias was not merely ineffective in inducing real growth but significantly destabilized it. Moreover, the results, which are robust to different inflation bias indicators and subsample analysis, indicate that the higher the inflation bias, the higher is the intensity (magnitude) of its destabilizing effect and vice versa. This suggests that a policy that would minimize/constrain inflation bias would be a better choice as it would not only help achieve low and stable inflation but also a sustainable real economic growth.     

The Global Integration and Transmission of Social Values: A Case of Family Ties

Social Indicators Research - Family ties are arguably of particular importance in an era of globalization, where ideological and material changes in national and global arena intersect with...     

Dynamics of Corruption and Citizens’ Trust in Anti-Corruption Agencies in Three South Asian Countries

The comparative analyses of citizens’ trust in Anti-Corruption Agencies (ACAs) in three countries’ (Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) indicate that despite ACA’s low level of effectiveness in curbing corruption, trust level varies. The Nepalese ACA has higher level of trust than Bangladesh and Sri Lanka which is earned by targeting mainly lower level public officials. Though it fails to reduce the level of corruption in Nepal; citizens tend to trust ACA more. This is because of higher visibility of ACA’s activities. Such findings indicate about the methodological challenge to use ‘trust’ as a proxy to measure institutional performance.     

Double moving average–EWMA control chart for exponentially distributed quality

A control chart is an ever-popular tool for monitoring the production process. The early detection of a process shift, if any, is the desire of the quality control personnel. In this article, an effective alternative control charting procedure has been developed for the monitoring of exponentially distributed quality characteristic using the double moving average combined with EWMA statistic. The performance of the proposed control chart is examined for different combinations of the shift constant, the EWMA smoothing parameter, the moving average span, and the target in-control average run lengths. It has been observed that the proposed control chart is more efficient in the detection of process shifts as compared to control chart suggested by Khoo and Wang for the same purpose. The proposed control chart is illustrated for practical usage with the help of a synthetic and a real dataset.     

A control chart for multivariate Poisson distribution using repetitive sampling

Control charts using repetitive group sampling have attracted a great deal of attention during the last few years. In the present article, we attempt to develop a control chart for the multivariate Poisson distribution using the repetitive group sampling scheme. In the proposed control chart, the monitoring statistic from the multivariate Poisson distribution has been used for the quick detection of the deteriorated process to avoid losses. The control coefficients have been estimated using the specified in-control average run lengths. The procedure of the proposed control chart has been explained by using the real-world example and a simulated data set. It has been observed that the proposed control chart is an efficient development for the quick detection of the nonrandom change in the manufacturing process.     

Social Protection,Gender, and Poverty: Application of Social Protection Index

Literature on social protection, inequality, and poverty suggest that social protection programs are the policy tool for the eradication of poverty and inequality. The exact targeting of beneficiaries is the most important pillar behind the success of every social protection schemes. Asian Development Bank introduced Revised Social Protection Index in 2010, which is used by several studies for the evaluation of social protection schemes. The current study estimates the revised social protection index of Pakistan for the years 2011 and 2013. During 2011, the average per capita expenditure on social protection was 5.1% of the poverty line expenditure, whereas during 2013, average per capita expenditure on social protection was 5.3% of the poverty line expenditure. The disaggregated form of social protection index indicates that the coverage of social protection programs are low in Pakistan. The expenditures on social protection programs are high for the non-poor and very low for poor. The gender-based disaggregated form of social protection index shows that women have a lower value of social protection index than do males.     

Global software development: an exploratory study of challenges of globalization,HRM practices and process improvement

The globalization of software development industry continues to experience a significant growth. The increased trend of globalization brings new challenges, increases the scope of the core functions of human resource management and impacts the dynamics of process improvement. The aim of this study is to explore the challenges of globalization and indicators of process improvement in distributed teams’ environment. This study also explores the impact of HRM practices on challenges of global software development, and, the impact of HRM practices and challenges of global software development on process improvement. The exploratory mixed method design is adapted as research methodology for this study. In this multi-method approach, study is completed in two phases. In first phase, qualitative data is collected, and analyzed to explore the study variables and their relationships in global software development environment. In second phase, quantitative data is collected, and analyzed to validate the findings of first phase. The findings of this study suggest that the challenges of global software development negatively impact the process improvement; but, effective HRM practices help to minimize the negative impact of challenges and positively impacts the process improvement in global software development environment.     

Capability indices for Birnbaum–Saunders processes applied to electronic and food industries

Process capability indices (PCIs) are tools widely used by the industries to determine the quality of their products and the performance of their manufacturing processes. Classic versions of these indices were constructed for processes whose quality characteristics have a normal distribution. In practice, many of these characteristics do not follow this distribution. In such a case, the classic PCIs must be modified to take into account the non-normality. Ignoring the effect of this non-normality can lead to misinterpretation of the process capability and ill-advised business decisions. An asymmetric non-normal model that is receiving considerable attention due to its good properties is the Birnbaum–Saunders (BS) distribution. We propose, develop, implement and apply a methodology based on PCIs for BS processes considering estimation, parametric inference, bootstrap and optimization tools. This methodology is implemented in the statistical software {\tt R}. A simulation study is conducted to evaluate its performance. Real-world case studies with applications for three data sets are carried out to illustrate its potentiality. One of these data sets was already published and is associated with the electronic industry, whereas the other two are unpublished and associated with the food industry.