New ODI research underscores how women's movements are leading the push for democratic governance and inclusion, particularly in contexts of eroding civic space or where democracies are increasingly authoritarian. Yet, they face growing backlash from a rising tide of politicised religion. Based...

In the pursuit of development and evaluation, entrepreneurship is the key to unlocking the shackles of poverty and unemployment. However, Pakistani students often catch themselves lacking the catalyst that ignites the entrepreneurial flame due to the absence of the essential knowledge, skills,...

New ODI research underscores how women's movements are leading the push for democratic governance and inclusion, particularly in contexts of eroding civic space or where democracies are increasingly authoritarian. Yet, they face growing backlash from a rising tide of politicised religion. Based...

Purpose Artificial intelligence (AI) offers many benefits to improve predictive marketing practice. It raises ethical concerns regarding customer prioritization, market share concentration and consumer manipulation. This paper explores these ethical concerns from a contemporary perspective,...

We study whether commuting barriers constrain women's labor supply in urban Pakistan. We randomize offers of gender-segregated or mixed-gender commuting services at varying prices. Women-only transport more than doubles job application rates, while mixed-gender transport has minimal effects on...

Lahore, a UNESCO city in Pakistan, is projected to rise from the sixth to the third fastest-growing city worldwide by 2030. This rapid urbanization challenges its commitment to cultural and ecological preservation, positioning it as an international case study in urbanization research. Thus, the...

Poor households are heterogeneous in the circumstances preventing an improvement in their welfare. It is important to understand the nuances within different types of poor households so that critical pathways out of poverty that remedy the variegated sets of constraints they face can be...

This study assesses the impact of fiscal policy in Pakistan - taxes, social expenditures, and subsidy expenditures - on poverty and inequality using the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Methodology. Results show that fiscal policy increased the national poverty headcount and left inequality largely...

Organizational change remains a significant challenge in developing countries, often hindered by entrenched bureaucratic cultures and resistance to reform. This study investigates the key determinants of change acceptance among public sector employees in Pakistan, focusing on the Khyber...

We estimate the impact of international standards certification on the export performance of firms in a developing economy using a unique panel data from Pakistan's textile and apparel sector. To address endogeneity, we implement a novel instrumental variable strategy that leverages the...

Pakistan faces significant gender gaps in wage employment, entrepreneurship, and access to productive assets. Women in Pakistan also contend with critical issues related to safety, mobility, agency, and restrictive social norms. This report provides an in-depth analysis of these disparities and...

Mehmood et al. (2023) estimate the effect of Ramadan fasting hours on judicial decisions using case-level data from Pakistan and India. Using exogenous variation in fasting intensity due to the Islamic lunar calendar and latitude, the authors find that Muslim judges are significantly more likely...

Accelerated progress towards and achievement of universal health coverage (UHC) has become a central goal of the Government of Pakistan's (GoP) policy agenda in health in recent years. Both at the center and in the provinces, Pakistan's domestic governments have now consistently reiterated,...

This paper summarizes the approach used to estimate monetary poverty for Pakistan in 2019-20 at the district level. The small area estimation method is used to impute welfare from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2018-19 into the Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement Survey...

In the fiscal year 2018/19, 21.9 percent of the population in Pakistan lived below the national poverty line. Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic, devastating floods in 2022, and a macro-fiscal crisis with record inflation have profoundly impacted economic activity and income-earning...

In 2016, Pakistan adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into its national development agenda as part of its commitment to the 2030 Agenda for Universal Health Coverage (UHC). In 2018, the Government of Pakistan designed and approved a National SDGs Framework to prioritize and localize...

This report reflects on the findings from an internal control assessment of health service delivery units for primary health care, as well as a subsequent options analysis. Together, they show significant opportunities for improved systemic efficiency, as low-value, frequent transactions (that...

After decades of volatile low growth and low investment, Pakistan has fallen behind its peers in key metrics of development. It now has an opportunity to durably take another course. The economy is recovering from the recent crisis as the government has launched an ambitious program of fiscal,...

This paper presents exploratory research assessing the impact of Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) measures on international students from Nigeria and Pakistan's financial inclusion in the UK. It explores the concept of de-risking, which could limit access...

The goal of this investigation is to establish a connection between the attributes of listed companies and the effects of the Pakistan-Malaysia Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) on Pakistan\'s stock markets. For that purpose, this research is to look at how the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) was...

This study examined the effects of information literacy (IL) on entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial skills among business students in Sargodha, Pakistan. A quantitative research design was employed along with a survey method. The data were gathered using a structured and...

Pakistan's overall national health budget had a high rate of execution from 2016 to 2019, averaging 95 percent. However, execution rates between provinces as well as between categories of spending varied significantly. At the health facility level, execution of spending is notably challenging,...

Abstract Pakistan's irrigated agriculture suffers from climate change due to its high exposure to climate extreme events and the low adaptation of its farming systems. Understanding the human aspects of adaptation decisions in a vulnerable climatic environment is integral for policymakers who...

Pakistan is one of the largest recipients of remittances globally and has substantial remittance inflow fluctuations; thus, finding the remittance-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio threshold is expedient. This study examined the macroeconomic impacts of emigrant remittances in Pakistan using a...

Servant leadership has been identified as extremely important for organizational performance and success; therefore, much focus is placed on developing and maintaining leaders' positive attitudes and behaviors toward their subordinates. Different servant models have been put out by earlier...

In the pursuit of development and evaluation, entrepreneurship is the key to unlocking the shackles of poverty and unemployment. However, Pakistani students often catch themselves lacking the catalyst that ignites the entrepreneurial flame due to the absence of the essential knowledge, skills,...

The current study looks at the relationships in the Pakistani smartphone market between brand experience, brand love, and brand loyalty. In addition, we also study brand trust's moderating effect. The data was collected from 300 Pakistani smartphone users. Structural equation modelling (SEM) and...

New processes significantly affect firms and workers; however, due to a lack of quantitative indicators, our understanding of the measures, determinants, and impacts of new processes remains limited. Drawing on unique data from Pakistan, we analyzed five different measures of process innovation...

We computationally reproduce the central findings in Mehmood (2022), which studied the effect of a 2010 reform in Pakistan replacing the presidential appointment of high-court judges with peer appointments. Mehmood leveraged judicial records interpreted and coded by lawyers in Pakistan at the...

The link between climate change and migration has gained considerable recognition in recent years. Yet, it remains a complex and highly divisive issue in policy and academic circles alike. Fanned by populist politics and partisan media, misleading claims of large-scale migration of climate...

The rising number of refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs) presents new challenges for vaccine distribution and the spread of diseases. How do forcibly displaced population inflows affect infectious diseases incidence in host communities? Can a policy intervention that vaccinates...

Information literacy (IL) plays an essential role in digital inclusion as it enables people to make use of the information available in multiple mediums on the Internet through digital devices. This study intends to examine the effect of IL on lifelong learning (LL) through the mediating role of...

This study aims to test the hypothesized moderated mediation process combining project conflicts, negative emotions, employee resilience, and employee burnout. It proposes that negative emotions can be considered as a mediator between the relationship of project conflicts and employee burnout,...

This study aims to investigate a model that applies team support for innovation as a mediating mechanism for the association of team identification (TI) with task performance (TP) and proactive work behavior (PWB) in the software companies. The sample encompasses 92 teams working in software...

The power sector of Pakistan has undergone numerous reforms, in this context the present study examines the impact of these reforms on efficacy and sustainability. The literature on power sector reforms in developing countries is extensive and diverse, covering various aspects and dimensions of...

The global concern of biodiversity loss highlights the significance of sustainable practices protecting natural resources, which require massive investment. However, scarce resources often hinder this, particularly in emerging economies. Biodiversity finance can be an anticipated solution to...

This study explores the impact of green transformational leadership and environmental strategies on promoting green innovation in manufacturing firms in Pakistan. It examines how such leadership and its strategies encourage employees to foster green innovation through effective knowledge-sharing...

Mobile banking, an innovative branchless banking system, is burgeoning in Pakistan. Grounded in expectation confirmation theory, this study empirically examines the interplay of trust beliefs and trustworthiness with relationship quality to generate user intentions for mobile banking. We...