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This study has investigated the connection between peace and performance of Pakistan's export sector. The interstates conflicts, terrorist activities and war elements disturb the industry supply chain, damage the means of transportation, and increase the security measures and regulations, which make trade more expensive. On the other hand, encouragement of the peace process lowers military conflicts, promotes diplomatic cooperation, and hence trade among the nations. The purpose of the study is to test whether domestic peace in Pakistan relative to its trading partners promotes its exports. For empirical analysis, we use panel data for Pakistan and its 26 trading partners in export over the period 2007–2018. After controlling the impacts of economic size, market size, infrastructure, and exchange rate, we found that peace in Pakistan relative to its trading partners is important to promote its export sector, which is directly linked with local industries and the wellbeing of individuals. The economic size and market size of the exporting nations relative to Pakistan also positively contributed towards the exports. The depreciation of Pakistan's exporting countries' currencies relative to its currency lowers the volume of exports. Besides, it is also observed that a major portion of Pakistan's exports is routed in a specific region or few countries. Therefore, it is suggested that the government should take active measures to reduce the internal as well as external conflicts, terrorists' attacks, and war elements to promote the volume of exports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between women empowerment and income inequality. In particular, we examine whether empowering women in terms of raising their political, social and economic rights reduce income inequality. Furthermore, this paper also sheds light on the effects of women empowerment on income inequality in different economies characterized by income differences. Using data for 134 countries from 1945 to 2015, we estimate a panel data model with treatment for endogeneity, controlling for savings rate, arable land rate and age-dependency ratio. Our results indicate that women empowerment in all three aspects (social, political and economic) plays an important role in reducing income inequality. This effect is more prominent in lower-middle and upper-middle income countries and is robust to different measures of inequality and women empowerment, and an alternative estimation technique that takes care of endogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the effect of structural change on the process of labour productivity convergence at different levels of data aggregations (regions, industries, countries), which is also known as hierarchical convergence analysis in the recent literature. Different forms of structural changes have occurred in the European Union, for instance, variations in the share of employment in different industries, variations in the demand pattern and variations in trade patterns and advancement in technology, which may have an influence on the nature of convergence. Earlier studies on convergence have neglected the effect of the structural change, which may have resulted in different conclusion about the convergence. Based on the results, the study found that the nature of convergence changes after considering the effect of the structural change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tries to explore the impact of trade openness on the total factor productivity growth in a panel of 94 countries for the period of 1964 to 2003. First, we calculate the total factor productivity growth rates by the growth accounting technique. Second, we estimate the relation between trade openness and the total factor productivity with two different specifications, one without country size and the other with country size. To control for expected heterogeneity in the sample countries, the analysis is carried out separately for the comprehensive sample (all countries) and three subgroups based on the income. Our empirical findings, without country size, suggest that total factor productivity growth is positively affected by trade openness for the comprehensive sample and also its three sub-groups of countries. Further, we also find that the magnitude of the trade impact on productivity growth is the highest for middle-income group of countries than low- and high-income group of countries. Results with country size suggests that country size itself, is not an important variable in describing the productivity growth, but it helps in capturing the true marginal effect of trade openness of the productivity growth. The impact of openness is stronger with country size for the comprehensive, middle and high group of income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the income convergence in the Gunungkidul Region, Indonesia and the role of infrastructure and employment in supporting this convergence. The data published by the Central Bureau of Statistics is used in this study. Then, this study uses the regression analysis of dynamic panel data to see whether the poor district will tend to grow faster than rich ones so that all economies will eventually converge in terms of per capita income. The results show that there is an income convergence in Gunungkidul Region. The infrastructure and employment are a useful tool for supporting income convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study focuses on the effects of imports, exports, financial direct investment inflow and financial direct investment outflow on sustainable economic growth expressed by various macroeconomic indicators (gross domestic product, gross domestic savings, gross domestic capital) using the least squares panel method. Sample data were selected for ten Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries and the time frame considered was 2005–2016. Generally, transitional economies have to incorporate strong savings and a steady capital formation in order to achieve higher economic growth via foreign direct investment. Results showed that the analyzed factors played a major role in the sustainable economic growth of CEE countries. Another important and valuable insight of this study is that the financial sector steers the process of achieving sustainable economic growth across CEE countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]