NEWS & MEDIA

NEWS

Research Paper Presentations

The Economics Faculty Departmental Meeting was held on 21st March, 2019, at 10:00 a.m. in TRC-1. Maryium Nazeef, Fatimah Shah, and Raja Abdar Rahman presented their MPhil research (abstracts given below).

Institutions and Exports: A Cross Country Analysis

Maryium Nazeef

Abstract

We argue that institutional perceptions in the country may influence export propensity of the firm based on standard theories we develop a moderated-mediation model of the underlying process linking institution and export and tested on the sample of (11,970 firms) in three countries Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The results of the regression analysis provides support for the model. We found that export was positively related to innovation after controlling for variables, and innovation mediated the relationship between export propensity and institutions. We found further that regulatory burden negatively moderated the relationship between export and innovation which in turn also mediated the interacted effect on institutions.

Impact of Parental Occupation on Child's Career Aspiration

Fatimah Shah

Abstract

This paper seeks to identify the relationship between parental occupations and gender specific career aspirations of undergraduate students. To do this, we conducted surveys with forth year undergraduate students in 8 universities of Lahore. These surveys have captured data on demographic characteristics, parental occupations and career aspirations. The results show that father's skill level has a positive impact on a child's career aspiration and this does not differ across genders. Furthermore, high mother's skill level is associated with higher career aspirations for children especially females. As career aspirations are determinant of one's career choices and attitude, therefore, obtained results are beneficial in understanding and analyzing prevailing gender gap in labor market.

Does Competition Overcome Moral Hazard? A Laboratory Experiment

Raja Abdar Rahman

Abstract

Moral hazard aggravates mistrust between principals and agents and leads to economic inefficiency. Although literature has looked at competition as a tool to cure moral hazard, the evidence is mixed at best. This thesis introduces two types of competition in a laboratory experiment comprising of real effort work tasks and two different incentive schemes to examine the effect of competition on moral hazard. We further investigate whether the reduction in moral hazard due to competition varies across its two types. Lastly, we test for a gender difference in the effect of competition on moral hazard.