Suchergebnisse

'Fiscal Policy, Stablisation, and Growth' edited by Guillermo Perry, is an excellent volume covering the typical but current debate on "Does Fiscal Policy Matters". The book highlights the procyclical and anti-investment biases embedded in fiscal policies, explores their causes and macroeconomic consequences. The text provides empirical substance to the theoretical models and offers policy and recommendations, to help overcome the procyclicality and anti-investment biases of fiscal policies adopted thereof. With wide range of technical and empirical discussions, political economy aspects of the budgets have also been examined. Though the focus of the book is Latin American and the Caribbean countries, the debate is so holistic that it can be used for policy recommendations else where as well. The book is organised in two parts; the first part, spread over four chapters, covers the procyclicality of Fiscal policy while the Part II, comprised of five chapters, elucidates the impact of fiscal policy on economic growth. The discourse takes into account the fiscal policy solvency condition and its imbedded biases towards certain policy options. Chapter 1 provides an excellent overview of what is discussed in the volume. The book argues that excessive focus of fiscal agents on short term indicators of fiscal health, namely the government debt or cash flows, may detract attention from tracking the intertemporal solvency. Such detraction will affect the macroeconomic stability and long-term growth, argues the book. Perverse incentives, that have political economy context, are at the root of flawed policies such as procyclical policies, contends the book.

Harold Demsetz,Emeritus Professor of Business Economics at the
University of California, Los Angeles, has done an excellentjob of
putting together research in the area of human behaviour and the
influence of institutions thereon. Demsetz is one of the leading figures
of the New Institutional Economics School. In this book, his focus is on
the institution of capitalism, which is by far the most influential
systemprevalent now. It presents and reviews historical developments in
the area and cites influential works, which makes the book a very
interesting read. The book is nottechnical and is meant for a broad
readership.

Aus pakistanischer Sicht

The aim of this research work is to develop an analytical framework for status quo analy-sis of milk production situation in Pakistani Punjab and evaluate the impact of various improvement interventions on the income of farm households involved in dairying. The district Sargodha is selected as the study region under mixed cropping system from irri-gated region of Punjab for conducting the dairying farm household survey. The data was collected in a cross sectional survey in winter 2005 from a sample of 36 dairying farm households from two villages located in the radius of 25 km from the district headquarter of Sargodha. The farm types are classified into three groups of small, medium and large scale farm types depending on the size of cultivated. The characteristics of farm types are explained through describing the case studies, results of cross sectional survey and typical farms. The analysis found that the land holding varies from 1 to 10 acres, 10 to 20 acres and more than 20 acres for small, medium and large scale farm types. The average number of milking animals varies from 3 to 10 among all three farm types. The small scale farms sell highest percentage of the total milk produced on the farm as compared to medium and large scale farm types. The small scale farms are more dependent on dairy income as a source of subsistence than medium and large farm types. The crop farming is the major focus of medium and large farm types to produce grain for home consumption and sell rest in the market. In medium and large scale farm type's, the dairy enterprise is not con-sidered as a commercial activity but rather a supplement to the crop farming ...

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) was an Arab scholar who was born in Tunis. He was linvolved in practical politics not only in his native land and Northwest Africa, but also in Muslim Spain and Mameluke Egypt. Ibn Khaldun combined his knowledge of practical politics by extensive studies of political theory, philosophy, religion, and history and wrote many works. His pioneer work is the "Muqaddimah" (Prolegomena) and his "Kitab-al-ibar" (Universal History). The "Muqaddimah" is a philosophy of history and embodies a system of sociological, political and economic thought. The Muqaddimah has been translated into several languages. Franz Rosenthal, has done the English translation in three extensive volumes, published by the Princeton University Press.

The international trade in plants is growing steadily as the worldwide demand for natural and botanical raw materials increases. Customers value natural products and botanicals as ""green"" alternatives. In order to build assurance into the sourcing of natural ingredients, R&D organizations will need to create valid scientific matrices to authenticate the quality of those ingredients, provide traceability, and minimize risk. This book provides researchers in industry and academia with the tool necessary to assure the quality, authenticity, and traceability of botanical raw materials for dietar

Theoretically, fiscal deficit is inflationary but the sources
of financing fiscal deficit may differ in terms of their impact on
inflation. Question arises that what should be the least inflation cost
source of financing? This study attempts to answer this question and
explore the long run relationship among the sources to finance fiscal
deficit and inflation. In so doing, the estimations have been done in
four stages on the basis of categorisation of the deficit financing
heads. In the first stage it has been tested that fiscal deficit along
with money supply are inflationary. In the second stage fiscal deficit
is bifurcated into two components, domestic borrowing and external
borrowing for fiscal deficit. In the third stage, domestic borrowing is
further divided into two heads, bank and non-bank borrowing. While in
the fourth and last stage, bank borrowing is further categorised into
two parts, borrowing from scheduled banks and central bank, and non-bank
borrowing which comprises borrowing from National Saving Scheme for
budgetary support. The Johansen Cointegration Technique is used for the
first stage of estimation, while Auto Regressive Distributed Lag Model
is employed for the rest of the three stages. The study finds that there
is a long run relationship among sources of financing fiscal deficit and
inflation. Inflation is positively affected by domestic borrowing, bank
borrowing and borrowing from central bank, while central bank borrowing
is more inflationary in nature. Consequently, fiscal deficit should be
financed through external sources, non-bank and scheduled bank
borrowings. JEL Classification: H62, H74, E31 Keywords: Deficit, State
and Local Borrowing, Inflation

In health care, consumer satisfaction is an important
evaluation instrument to determine the quality of services. In recent
years, the concept has assumed much greater significance particularly in
market based health systems. Also, in World Health Organisation's
framework for health care assessment, the customer satisfaction is given
due consideration. On the contrary, in developing countries
particularly, the concept is one of the most ignored elements in
evaluation of health care systems. Pakistan is also a case in point.
Review of literature and general health management systems in the
country suggests scarcity of information on consumer satisfaction as
well as its neglect as a crucial element in health systems. This present
study—which is cross-sectional—is designed on the ground that there is a
need to incorporate consumer satisfaction in health care evaluation.
This study, presents a scientific analysis of Punjab Employees Social
Security Institution Hospital, Rawalpindi (PESSI) using the Patient
Survey Questionnaire technique, the most universal approach used by
international studies to evaluate consumer satisfaction with health
services. Based on study results, generally, we conclude that consumers
have expressed high level of satisfaction for various quality assessment
scales. Despite these findings, it has also been noted that significant
proportion of patients have also expressed medium as well as low
satisfaction for certain scales. It tends to suggest that quality of
services needs to be improved for specific items as well as certain
scales including communication, general satisfaction, and interpersonal
aspects for improvements in provision of certain services at the
hospital. JEL classification: I11, I18, I38 Keywords: Customer
Satisfaction, Quality, Healthcare, Evaluation

Saving and investment are two key macro variables with micro
foundations which can play a significant role in economic growth,
inflation stability and promotion of employment especially if seen in
the context of a developing country. For self-reliance and growth
objectives, mobilisation of domestic resources and their efficient
utilisation are the two major policy oriented focuses today [Khan
(1993)]. National savings are critically important to help maintain a
higher level of investment which is a key determinant for economic
uplift. Thereby, necessitating the analysis of saving-investment
behaviour and its determinants for policy implications; this is a
demanding area because of continuing debate on the potential role of
their determinants.

The term fiscal responsibility in financial dictionary is
defined as "A balanced budget". That is a budget wherein expenditures
during a given period of time equal to revenues. The fiscal
responsibility also includes a budget in which revenue is greater than
the expenditures. Fiscal responsibility is achievable and most of the
individuals in their private life practice fiscal responsibility. At
individual level everybody knows that they have to live within the
budget and usually they do not overspend. Usually overspending by
individual results in bad crediting rating which one receives from their
creditors due to non-payments or late payments of installments and thus
denies future benefits to the person concern. Fiscal responsibility at
national level implies that a government has a balanced budget and has
sufficient revenue to pay for its all expenditures. There would be no
overspending if government had a true balanced budget in each period.
The economic future of a nation largely depends on the way fiscal
responsibility is practiced. There is a direct link between budget
deficit today and what nation can enjoy in future. Fiscal responsibility
is crucial for a nation to remain prosperous and stronger in future.
Fiscal responsibility will also determine what kind of future we are
leaving to our children and grandchildren for the next 20 years and
beyond. If the fiscal responsibility is not practiced the government
would spend more money than its income and it borrows for the
difference. If the money borrowed come from domestic savings or from
domestic lenders the economy will have less money available for capital
investment and future productivity growth rates and levels would be
lower. If on the other hand deficit is financed by foreign
organisation/country the country will be indebted with growing debt to
the rest of the world, with growing interest costs which must be served
every year. If we rely more on foreign sources to finance the resource
gap the foreign ownership of our resources would grow and so has our
dependences on the actions of foreign governments and
investors.