Search results

In 2001, a scheme called Citizen Community Board (CCB), a kind of communitybased organisation (CBO), was introduced in Pakistan, under which local people propose development projects to the local government through forming a CCB, and upon approval the local government funds 80 percent of the project cost. Since 2001, however, both the number of CCBs and that of approved projects have been below the expected level. This raises a concern that the Pakistani society with limited historical experience in CBO-based development is too handicapped for the CCB scheme to be successful. This paper addresses this concern through quantifying the determinants of successful formation of a CCB and those of successful development activities conditional on the formation. The regression results using a cross-section dataset in a district in Pakistan Punjab in 2004-05 suggest that the rules within a CCB and the type of leadership are key to the success of CCB initiatives.

This article sheds new light, from a transnational perspective, on the intellectual struggle in Japan over nuclear deterrence. Japanese scientists opposed the Cold War order from the superpowers on down. Against the backdrop of the intensifying nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, Pugwash scientists came to accept a key notion by the mid-1960s; namely, that stable mutual deterrence is a prerequisite for averting nuclear war and promoting nuclear arms control. Under such circumstances, the Japanese Pugwash scientists began to criticize nuclear deterrence in the early 1960s in Japanese society. This article recounts how their challenges to the intellectual hegemony of nuclear deterrence developed not only from antiwar and antinuclear sentiments that they shared with the Japanese public, but also from the transnational transfer of ideas through the Pugwash organization.

AbstractAggregate shocks such as droughts and floods cannot be perfectly insured by risk sharing within a village. Given this inability, what type of households are more vulnerable in terms of a decline in consumption when a village is hit by such shocks and what kind of microeconomic mechanism underlies the household heterogeneity in vulnerability? These questions are investigated using two-period panel data collected in rural Pakistan in 2001 and 2004. We compare consumption response to droughts, floods and health shocks and investigate how the response differs across different types of households. Empirical results show that the impact of droughts was negligible, younger and more landed households were less vulnerable to floods, and households with greater access to formal financial institutions were less vulnerable to idiosyncratic health shocks. The empirical pattern suggests the possibility of risk sharing among households that are heterogeneous in both risk aversion and credit access.

In this paper, the concept of vulnerability of the poor's
welfare and its practical measures are scrutinised in order to derive
implications for targeting poverty reduction policies toward vulnerable
households. As illustration, various measures of vulnerability proposed
in the literature are applied to a panel data-set collected from rural
Pakistan. The empirical results show that different vulnerability
rankings can be obtained depending on the choice of the measure. By
utilising these measures, we can identify who and which region is more
vulnerable to a particular type of risk. This kind of information is
useful in targeting poverty reduction policies. Since the nature of
vulnerability is diverse, it is advisable to use the whole vector of
various vulnerability measures. JEL classification: I32, I38. Keywords:
Vulnerability, Poverty, Risk, Consumption Smoothing,
Pakistan.

In 2001, a scheme called Citizen Community Board (CCB), a kind
of community-based organisation (CBO), was introduced in Pakistan as a
devolution policy, under which local people propose to the local
government development projects through forming a CCB and upon approval
the local government funds 80 percent of the project cost. Since 2001,
however, both the number of CCBs and that of approved projects have been
below the expected level. This raises a concern that the Pakistani
society with limited historical experience in CBO-based development is
too handicapped for the CCB scheme to be successful. Although the number
of empirical studies on Pakistan's CCB scheme has been increasing [e.g.,
see Cheema and Mohmand (2004), Cheema, et al. (2006)], our understanding
on conditions for a success of such schemes is limited. This paper thus
attempts to analyse the conditions in the context of community and
economic development in Pakistan from Japanese Perspectives.