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Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad.

Thesis Info

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Author

Umaima Arif

Program

PhD

Institute

Quaid-I-Azam University

City

Islamabad

Province

Islamabad.

Country

Pakistan

Thesis Completing Year

2018

Thesis Completion Status

Completed

Subject

Economics

Language

English

Link

http://prr.hec.gov.pk/jspui/bitstream/123456789/11260/1/Umaima_Arif_Economics_2018_QAU_PRR.pdf

Added

2021-02-17 19:49:13

Modified

2024-03-24 20:25:49

ARI ID

1676724960626

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This dissertation consists of the analysis of the evolution, structure and practices of fiscal federalism in Pakistan and develops a framework for analyzing the impact of fiscal decentralization on economic growth in the presence of macroeconomic stability and quality of governance institutions. In addition, the dissertation aims to determine the optimal choice of taxes/transfers for Pakistan and to investigate budget spillover and fiscal policy interdependence at the provincial level for Pakistan economy. To achieve the abovementioned objectives, the dissertation is divided into four independent studies. The first study deals with the federalist politics and local government reforms for Pakistan. The study also highlights the fiscal performance of the country during the past few years. The analysis shows that provinces are now exerting considerable fiscal efforts along with improvement in tax collection. Provincial governments are performing a major role in development activities and variation in preferences of the sub-national governments for development expenditure is the outcome of provincial fiscal autonomy. The outcome of this study will help the policy makers and researchers to identify the existing status of the decentralized fiscal practices in Pakistan and to design better future policies for sub-national governments. The second study analyzes the impact of fiscal decentralization on economic growth and broadens the scope of assessment by allowing the impact of fiscal decentralization on economic growth to depend on nation’s macroeconomic stability and quality of governance institutions. The study uses a panel dataset of 33 developed and 20 developing countries over the period of 1996-2014. The study finds that fiscal decentralization is growth enhancing when supported by sound institutional structure in terms of rule of law, low corruption in government institutions, high bureaucratic quality and democratic accountability. Further, the results show that the effect of fiscal decentralization on per capita GDP growth rate is positive when it is complemented by stable macroeconomic conditions in terms of stability in prices, budget deficit and exchange rate. Therefore, in the absence of good governance and macroeconomic stability, decentralization is harmful to growth, however, decentralization can become growth enhancing if macroeconomic stability and quality of governance institutions exceed certain critical levels. All these conclusions hold for developed as well as developing countries. The third study follows the endogenous growth model developed by Barro (1990) and extended by Gong and Zou (2002) to understand how tax and expenditure assignments between federal and provincial government affect the choice of public policy, welfare and economic growth for Pakistan economy. The analysis shows that, an increase in federal income tax will boost the rate of growth as long as the income tax rate is less than or equal to 10% with given provincial taxes, preferences, technology and federal transfers. However critical level of provincial income tax rate that corresponds to maximum growth is estimated to be 5%. The analysis depicts that higher federal and consumption taxes improve the welfare of citizens, up to a certain level, through their positive impact on the rate of economic growth, however, provincial property tax entails larger distortionary effects for raising revenue relative to other taxes. The analysis shows that federal transfers for provincial spending have positive influence on growth rate, up to a certain level, although the effect of increase in the rate of federal transfers is not much significant. The result depicts that growth maximizing policy choices of income, consumption and property taxes are also consistent with welfare maximizing policy choices of taxation. The fourth study investigates fiscal policy interdependence at the provincial level for Pakistan by using time-space set of spending data and alternative measures to define neighborliness. The study estimated a kind of spatial lag/durbin model within seemingly unrelated regression framework to investigate whether variables observed in one unit affect the other units. The result shows that expenditure preferences of provincial governments are influenced by the expenditure choices of their neighboring provinces. In addition, provincial expenditure on law and order, health, education and economic services also seems to be influenced by the spending choices of neighboring provinces. Therefore, inter provincial spillover effects for aggregate and disaggregated provincial spending may requires a different composition for federal grants to provinces and an analysis of these spillover effects will provide innovative insights for federal and provincial budget formulation.
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مولانا غلام محمد شملوی

مولانا غلام محمدشملوی
یہ خبر نہایت رنج و افسوس کے ساتھ درج کی جاتی ہے کہ ندوۃ العلماء کے مشہور سفیر و وکیل مولانا غلام محمد صاحب شملوی نے ۲۹؍ مارچ ۱۹۳۴؁ء کو وفات پائی، ندوۃ العلماء کے مقاصد کی اشاعت اور اس کے لیے مالی امدادوں اور چندوں کے حصول میں ان کی کوششیں بہت کامیاب تھیں، وہ جوانی میں تارک الدنیا فقیر ہوگئے تھے، اور جنگلوں میں رہتے تھے، ندوۃ العلماء کے ابتدائی اجلاسوں کے روحانی اثرات نے ان کو دوبارہ دنیا میں داخل کیا اور ندوۃ العلماء کی خدمت کا ایسا ولولہ ان میں پیدا کیا کہ مرتے دم تک سرد نہیں ہوا، وہ بڑے پرجوش مقرر، روشن خیال عالم اور صاحب عزم محنتی تھے، ندوہ کی خدمت میں انہوں نے ہندوستان کی گلی گلی کی خاک چھانی، اور ہر چھوٹے بڑے سے ملے، مدت سے ان کی صحت خراب تھی، وفات کے وقت ان کی عمر ستر کے قریب ہوگئی، تاہم ان میں ایسی ہمت تھی جو جوانوں کو شرماتی تھی، خدا مغفرت فرمائے۔
(سید سلیمان ندوی، اپریل ۱۹۳۴ء)

 

Polemic Views about the Source of Qur’ān in Medieval Christian Writings with a Reflection upon Contemporary Orientalists: A Critical Review

Before the advent of Islam, there was a strong tradition of polemic writings both among the Jews and the Christians to prove the errors of adversary. But, after the advent of Islam in general, and the conquering of Roman / Byzantine empire by the Muslims in the era of Righteous Califate in specific, due to embracing Islam by a large number of local populace, the flux of Christian polemic writing was directed towards Islam. A number of polemic writings surfaced as a resort to keep their religion alive. These writings tried to belittle all basic concepts, beliefs, and creeds of Islam, and even the personality of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and the Holy Qur’ān. The contemporary orientalist polemic writers have claimed that there are several accounts originating from Jewish and Christian sources which tried to allegedly prove that the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was instructed by Jewish or Christian scholars in the composition of Holy Qur’ān, and to support this claim, they not only point out to certain Jewish or Christian sources, but have parroted their arguments as well, with the similar motives. With this, they have attempted to discredit Islam by raising doubts about the origin of Qur’ān. But despite of their efforts the fact remains firm that the Qur’ān has a Divine origin and was revealed by Allah Ta‘ālā unto Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In this regard, the purpose of this article is to analyze the medieval polemic writings, their motives, and their rumination by the orientalists of the contemporary age. A critical approach is adopted in this analytical, and historical study, using published authentic data and literature including academic books, research papers, periodicals, dictionaries and reliable web sites also.

Profiling of Indigenous Bacterial Strains for the Remediation of Industrial Effluents

Industrial revolution has played a positive role in the economic growth and development but environment is affected negatively. This has led to the contamination of environment with toxic chemicals. Biodegradation of these harmful pollutants using microbes is strongly recommended as this is more efficient than other costly physicochemical processes. Current study was aimed to isolate indigenous bacteria capable of biodegrading toxic chemicals. For this purpose effluent samples were collected from Hattar Industrial Estate, Haripur, Pakistan and characterized. Initially, forty eight distinct bacterial isolates were obtained by plating on mixed metal nutrient agar medium supplemented with 200μg/ml each of chromium, lead, nickel salts. Further screening on solid agar medium both in rich and minimal medium (M9 and BH) supplemented with 12 different metal salts (Cr, Cu, Cd, As, Ag, Hg, Zn, Fe, Mn, Ni and Co) was done. Representatives of different classes of aromatic compounds including polyaromatic hydrocarbons phenanthrene (500-6000 μg/ml), biphenyl and naphthalene (1000-4000 μg/ml); petroleum hydrocarbons (1-3%) benzene, toluene, xylene; aromatic amines (1mM) aniline, chloroaniline; phenolic compounds (50-200μg/ml) phenol, p-nitrophenol, pentachlorophenol and azo dyes (50-100μg/ml) methyl orange, methyl yellow, methyl red, erichrome black T and congo red were used to determine the degradation potential of isolates. Results revealed that these bacteria had multiple heavy metal resistances. They were potentially able to utilize multiple hydrocarbons and azo dyes as carbon/ energy sources after degradation. Based on these tolerance/utilization profiles sixteen morphologically, physiologically and biochemically different isolates were chosen for metal remediation/ organic pollutant utilization/ degradation studies. Quantitative and qualitative investigation of transformation ability of these sixteen isolates for phenanthrene (1000mg/l), aniline (1mM), p-nitrophenol (50mg/l), pentachlorophenol (100mg/l) and azo dyes (50mg/l) congo red, methyl red was achieved by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), UV-visible spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Five potent strains were identified as Stenotrophomonas sp. MB339 (Acc No. KP723528), Staphylococcus sp. MB371 (Acc No. KP723530), Bacillus sp. MB366 (Acc No. KP723529), Klebsiella pneumoniae MB361 (Acc No. KP723532), Klebsiella pneumoniae MB373 (Acc No. KP723531) by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Among metal remediating strains, Staphylococcus MB371, Stenotrophomonas MB339, Klebsiella pneumoniae MB361 showed maximum accumulation of Pb, Cr and Ni (i.e. 75.33, 34.07, 54.98%), respectively at 37°C. In addition, these strains efficiently reduced more than 70% of 200mg/l Cr (VI) to Cr (III) and >90% of phenanthrene, p-nitrophenol, pentachlorophenol at different pHs (5-9) and temperature (25-45°C). In case of aniline up to 91% degradation was achieved by Bacillus MB366, Stenotrophomonas MB339, Klebsiella pneumoniae MB373 at pH 7, 37°C. While, Staphylococcus sp. MB371, Klebsiella pneumoniae MB361 were unable to use aniline at pHs 5, 6. Decolorization of methyl red (>75%) was achieved by all five strains within pH range 5-9 and 30-37°C. However, less or even no decolorization was observed at 45°C especially by Stenotrophomonas MB339. Complete genome sequence analysis of these five strains was done using Ilumina Miseq and annotated with IMG ER pipeline. Genomic features of strains were different from one another in many attributes like size, total number of genes, protein coding genes, rRNA genes and G+C content. Functional annotations depicted that these strains were highly diverse in their metabolism. Heavy metal resistance genes organized in operons for arsenic, copper, mercury were identified in Stenotrophomonas MB339, for arsenic in Staphylococcus MB371 and Bacillus MB366. While genes for metal (Cr, As) reductase, efflux pump and other membrane proteins (Co, Cd, Fe, Zn, Mn) were annotated in genomes of Klebsiella quasipneumoniae subsp. similipneumoniae MB373, Stenotrophomonas MB339, Staphylococcus MB371 and Bacillus MB366. Genome annotations indicated that these genomes have variety of metabolic pathways for xenobiotics degradation. Aromatic ring hydroxylating dioxygenase genes responsible for degradation of PNP, PCP, phenanthrene. While genes for FMN-dependent, NADH-azo reductase might be supportive for methyl red decolorization. For nitroaromatic compounds, nitroreductase genes were found in Klebsiella pneumoniae MB361, Stenotrophomonas MB339 and Bacillus MB366. Indigenous bacteria isolated from industrial effluents play a significant role to detoxify metals and transform variety of chemicals present in contaminated environment. Present study revealed the molecular mechanisms behind adaptability of these biotopes to changing environmental conditions. This detailed research comprising of analytical and molecular approaches, highlight the biodegradation potential of strains which paves way for future bioprospecting of the potential enzymes vital for biodegradation perspective.