Impact of Institutional Quality on Trade Performance of Small and Medium Enterprises in Pakistan

The trade economy is dependent upon the institutional quality of the country. It affects the ease of doing business in the economy. It is plausible to think that, how institutional quality can affect the trading performance of Pakistan. Small & medium enterprises (SMEs) are playing the role of the backbone of the trade sector in Pakistan. Contribution SMEs can be significantly improved, by improving the supporting macroeconomic indicators. This paper studies the short-run and the long-run association between SME trade growth and cost of production, relative prices, and Institutional quality in Pakistan. It also examines the Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis, between SME trade growth and institutional quality in Pakistan. This study utilizes secondary data, which is taken from multiple secondary sources, including the SMEDA, Pakistan Economic Survey, and world development indicators. The biannual data is assembled up for 38 observations from (2000 to 2019). This study uses Auto Regressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) bound testing method to examine the short run and long run connections between SMEs’ trade growth and macro-economic variables, like; relative prices, Cost of production. Gross Domestic Product, exchange rate, and institutional quality. These variables are selected from the available literature. The study finds that the short-run response of SMEs trade is not significant, but it significantly responds to macro-economic indicators in long run. The institutional quality has a non-linear relationship with SMEs trade growth. This indicates that the pollution heaven hypothesis holds valid even for the case of institutional quality and SMEs trading performance. The study focuses on the optimality of institutional quality for the optimal performance level of SMEs in Pakistan.

Fabrication and Characterization of Ii-Vi Semiconductor Thin Films and the Study of Post Doping Effects

Fabrication and Characterization of II-VI Semiconductor Thin Films and the Study of Post Doping Effects II-VI semiconductors have great importance in solar cell applications due to their excellent optical and electrical properties. This thesis is mainly concerned with the study of II-VI semiconductor thin films with a particular interest in their potential application in solar cells. A coating system based on close spaced sublimation (CSS) has been developed and thin films of zinc telluride (ZnTe), Zn and Te enriched ZnTe, cadmium sulfide (CdS) and cadmium zinc sulfide (CdZnS) were fabricated. CdS is transparent to electromagnetic radiations; in particular to the visible and infra-red regions and are highly resistive materials. This research work pertained to improve CdS thin films as window materials using close spaced sublimation technique. The optimization of deposition parameters including vacuum in the chamber, distance between source-substrate, source and substrate temperatures are all investigated. ZnTe has been used as a buffer layer between CdTe and the metal back contact in II-VI semiconductor solar cells due to its compatibility with p-type cadmium telluride (CdTe). The purpose of the buffer layer is to help CdTe form a good Ohmic contact with the metal back contact, however, ZnTe itself is highly resistive. The main goal is to reduce electrical resistivity of ZnTe for its use as buffer layer in the back contact. The resistivity of the ZnTe thin film is modified by doping with silver (Ag) and/or copper (Cu). The compositions of zinc (Zn) and tellurium (Te) in the enriched (Zn or Te) ZnTe thin film is also explored to lower the resistivity of ZnTe film, which has not been reported earlier using CSS technique. In all these processes, the structural, surface, electrical and optical properties are studied for strong correlation. Ion exchange process is adopted for Ag and Cu doping in as-deposited ZnTe thin films with subsequent annealing. CdS is a potential candidate for window layer due to its suitable and tunable energy band gap (2.42 eV). Effects of doping are investigated on the structural, electrical and optical properties of CdS thin films fabricated by the CSS technique. These properties of fabricated CdS thin films are found to be suitable for solar cell applications. To enhance band gap, CdS and Zn powder are mixed mechanically with different weight percentages to deposit thin films CZS fabricated by CSS technique that has not been documented earlier. The increased energy band gap for CZS is 2.57 eV, which has improved the window region.