Kipling’s Depiction of the Great Game Between British India and Czarist Russia

This article provides valuable information about the living conditions of Muslims of the Pak-Afghan Region in the context of revisiting Rudyard Kipling’s view of the Great Game of the 19th century between Great Britain and Russia that roughly continued for about a century beginning in the second decade of the 19th century to the signing of the Anglo Russian convention in 1907. In this respect his famous novel, Kim (1901) has been critically examined to establish the political content of his creative work. Coupled with the appreciation of the novel as a great work of art with its many facets and themes, views of Edward Said have been juxtaposed to arrive at a conclusion that the novel is also a celebration of imperialism. In today’s scenario in Central Asia particularly Afghanistan, a revisit of Kipling is an interesting revelation. The discussion also reveals the similarities of the tussle of two centuries back to the realities in the region today. This insight as we appreciate Kipling’s masterpiece novel proves even more eye-catching and real. This paper also examines Peter Hopkirk’s works on the Great Game to historically asses the dialectics of the imperial struggle between the two super powers of the time. In this connection, a brief discussion is available on the three Anglo-Afghan Wars as well as the conflict in Kashgharia. This article presents an overview of the view head by Russians on the conflict which they call Tournament of Shadows or Bolshya Igra involving spies and military personnel. A fresh look at Kipling’s works in general and his novel Kim, in particular, helps explore the very essentials of the working of Imperialism and empire-building, which is the main stay of this paper. A deeper look would understandably unfurl big powers rivalry in general, and the present day security situation in Asia in particular, by going through the works of a great writer; the first Englishman and the youngest recipient for Nobel Prize in Literature (1907).  

Idiosyncratic Risk and Expected Return of Portfolio Investment Evidence from Stock and Commodity Markets of Pakistan

The central theme of this research study is related with the role of idiosyncratic risk in commodity and stock returns of Pakistan being emerging markets of the world. In the framework of asset pricing, literature suggests that idiosyncratic risk is independent to the specific assets therefore it has no role in explaining the returns. However, modern portfolio theory suggests that in under diversified portfolio, idiosyncratic risk has the positive relationship with stock returns, while the negative association of idiosyncratic risk has also been reported by different scholars. To settle this conflict through Pakistani context, the current study investigates the role of idiosyncratic risk empirically in these two financial markets. Stock market is divided into two sectors i.e. financial sector including returns of financial companies and non-financial sector comprising data of non-financial companies. The daily and monthly data are taken from January 2005 to 2016 for analysis. For commodity market of Pakistan which is totally independent from stock market, separate daily data set is taken from 2011 to 2016. As the data is of quantitative in nature therefore various statistical tools are applied for this purpose. Cross sectional regression is used for testing the association between expected conditional idiosyncratic risk and returns. Conditional idiosyncratic risk is estimated through Egarch model for both markets. The empirical results showed that conditional idiosyncratic risk and return of non-financial, financial and commodity returns has significant positive relationship after controlling the different factors such as value, momentum and size etc. whereas the lag idiosyncratic risk has no relationship with returns of stocks and commodities. The empirical evidence confirms the findings of previous studies. In the end it is suggested that investors can develop profitable portfolio after considering the idiosyncratic risk.