Suchergebnisse

A system of effective quantitative restrictions on the supply
of imported commodities will raise domestic prices of imports to levels
well above their landed cost, i.e., price plus taxes, tariffs, and a
normal markup. In 1965, Pal estimated the magnitude of such scarcity
premia for a number of important commodities for East and West Pakistan
[1; 2]1. His study has proved very useful both in measuring the
influence of quantitative restrictions on the price of imports and,
equally important, in showing the structure or incidence of
restriction-induced profits—their distribution among consumption,
intermediate and capital goods and their incidence relative to import
policy. Pal's study was unavoidably static in nature and does not allow
us to trace the changes over time. The purpose of the present paper is
three-fold: first, to provide a comparison with Pal's study using data
collected after two years and after a number of changes in Pakistan's
import policies. This part of the analysis Is based strictly on Pal's
commodity list. Second, in order to examine the impact of changing
import composition, we shall recompute the scarcity premia on the basis
of a new list of commodities and a changed set of weights (value of
imports). Finally, we shall analyse the significance of the results for
import control policy.

Outcome of the Second BEF Conference held in Dhaka in October 2015