Few would oppose a devolution reform that truly empowers the grassroots level and improves service delivery for the poor. We demonstrate that the key to such devolution in rural Pakistanis diffusing power via land reforms so that the poor are empowered and capable of ensuring that the service...

We argue that Pakistan is unlikely to change its human development ranking and bring it closer to its ranking in per-capita GDP until it copes with it's low achievement in basic schooling. This paper draws on the experience of private sector and NGO schools to identify lessons for the government...

This paper has three objectives. First, to contribute to the literature by carefully documenting home based work in four sectors in Pakistan in a value chain context. Second, to demonstrate the extent to which home-based workers are deprived of the value they create by tracking the distribution...

Using the Kuznets' inverted-U-shaped association as a structural constraint, we model the social tradeoff between changing inequality and changing income. Observed outcomes are thought of as attempts to find a constrained political-economic optimum. This model implies estimates of the parameters...

This study uses a production function approach to identify the impact of student, parent, teacher, and school policy variables on student performance as measured by test scores. Our statistical analysis is conducted in a comparative institutional context that includes government, private, and...

Public sector salaries, including those that apply to rural teachers in Pakistan, are rigidly determined by educational qualifications and experience. If it can be determined that educational qualifications and experience enhance teacher cognitive skills, which in turn enhance student cognitive...

This paper compiles micro-level evidence to demonstrate the existence of win-win scenarios from environmental mitigation in the trade and environmental context. This implies that environmental mitigation via Clean Production (CP) contribute to net private and social gains in production and trade...

India's economic success over the last decade and a half, and more recently Pakistan's economic progress under the military government, have drawn attention. While these and information technology in India may be the main South Asian success stories drawing attention currently, there are a...

Using the Kuznets inverted-U-shaped association as a structural constraint, we model the social tradeoff between changing inequality and changing income. If observed outcomes for recent decades are taken as constrained political-economic optima, this model identifies the parameters of a social...