Muhammad Ali

• PhD
• Associate Professor and AvH Fellow at Friedrich Schiller University Jena

The paper extends the findings of the Coe and Helpman (Eur Econ Rev 39(5):859-887, 1995) model of R&D spillovers by considering foreign direct investment (FDI) as a channel for knowledge spillovers in addition to imports. Deeper insights on the issue are provided by examining the inter-relationship between knowledge spillovers from imports and inwa...

The under-five stunting rate in Pakistan is one of the highest in the world despite rapid decline in poverty and open defecation over the years. To identify the determinants of childhood stunting in Pakistan, this study used a parsimonious regression model to quantitatively apply the UNICEF multisectoral nutrition framework to Pakistan using Demogr...

The paper examines the effect of diversification on social welfare in South Asia using the macroeconomic data for the period 1996–2011, with export diversification as a proxy of economic diversification. In this paper, three types of diversification are assessed (i.e. related, unrelated, and overall variety). While unrelated variety and overall var...

Theoretically, human capital is conclusively believed to be positively related with economic growth. While empirically, the said relationship does not always hold for several reasons. Thus, the current paper presents new results on a set of conditions under which human capital is robustly and positively associated with economic growth. Using data f...

Foreign Direct Investment is theoretically expected to facilitate the transfer of knowledge from the home country to the host country, however, the empirical evidence on the subject is mixed. Some studies have shown that, on one hand, as competition grows, the incentive to innovate reduces with the decrease in monopoly rents (Schumpeterian effect)....

Recent literature on knowledge spillovers argues that diversified economic structures are more conducive to knowledge spillovers than specialized structures: a concept that is generally known as Jacobian Externalities. It further argues that diversification can be further decomposed into two forms, that is, related variety (RV) and unrelated variet...

AimPakistan has one of the highest proportions of stunted children in the world, and the prevalence of stunting has been quite persistent over the years. This study aims to identify the factors behind the persistent prevalence of under-5 stunting in Pakistan, focusing on a child’s access to food, health, care, and environment and the synergies amon...

Children are disproportionately affected by disasters, in both the long and short term, particularly in developing countries. Children in rural areas face the most adversity since they are inadequately prepared, lacking in resources, and oblivious to their potential. Many children continue to turn to their parents or guardians for help in emergenci...

Germany is among the largest countries in the world in terms of total GDP, owing largely to rapid industrialization and expansion of economic activities into several sectors. This paper contributes to the literature on German economic development by investigating the evolution of industry diversification in Germany; particularly focusing on the rec...

Objectives The study aimed to identify the determinants of childhood diarrhea in Pakistan with a specific focus on water, sanitation, hygiene, and mother’s decision-making ability. Methods This study is based on nationally representative Demographic and Health Survey of Pakistan. The working sample is 3,067 children. Bi-variate and multi-variate l...

Foreign remittance is the second-largest source of foreign exchange in Pakistan which makes international migrant workers key players in the balance of payments equation of Pakistan. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are the most common destinations for unskilled migrant workers from Pakistan. With the increasing...

While the state of sanitation in Pakistan has improved in the last decade, a significant proportion of its population is still using inadequate sanitation or no toilet facility at all. Open defecation has decreased over the years; however, it has been replaced by poor quality sanitation in rural areas that might still cause diarrhoea and undernutri...

In this paper, we reassess the relationship between foreign aid and income inequality. The existing literature provides mixed evidence at best on the direction, magnitude, and significance of the relationship between foreign aid and income inequality. We contribute to the literature on this topic by differentiating between types of foreign aid name...

Pakistan’s agricultural productivity is considered to be low despite several agriculture promotion policies. Such policies concentrate primarily on on-farm development and overlook rich prospects for off-farm diversification. Livelihood diversification of small-scale farmers plays a major role in reducing hunger and mitigating the adverse impacts o...

Premature mortality and undernutrition rates in Pakistan are among the highest in the world. Inadequate infant and young child feeding are the major causes of premature mortality and undernutrition. Yet, very little is known about the determinants of complementary feeding practices in Pakistan. Therefore, this study aims to identify the determinant...

While the state of sanitation in Pakistan has improved in the last decade, a significant proportion of its population is still using inadequate sanitation or no toilet facility at all. Open defecation has decreased over the years; however, it has been replaced by poor quality sanitation in rural areas that might still cause diarrhoea and undernutri...

School resilience is characterized as risk management techniques to build a safe environment for students. Recognizing the need of building disaster resilience for the education sector, this study is aimed at assessing flood disaster resilience of elementary schools in four extremely vulnerable districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan....

Pakistan is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. The households in rural Pakistan predominantly rely on the agriculture sector which is why their livelihood is threatened by floods. Considering income diversification as a risk-spreading livelihood strategy, this study examines the determinants of income diversification in the flo...

Schools serve as a hub for children to learn and involve in disaster mitigation activities and to connect with the community. The government of Pakistan has initiated different capacity building and safety training programs to increase the preparedness level among school children. However, the effectiveness of such capacity building training progra...

Consumption accounts for more than 70% of GDP in both Pakistan and India and both countries face high debt to GDP ratio as well as current account deficit. Consequently, exchange rates are usually volatile and they directly affect major economic indicators in the respective countries. Therefore, this study examines the impact of the exchange rate a...

Economic diversification is recognized in literature as a strong determinant of economic development. The relationship between economic diversification and human development (social welfare), however, is not conclusive. High level of diversification can improve social welfare by providing a large range of alternatives to economic agents. On the con...

The progress on reducing stunting is rather slow in Pakistan despite significant reductions in poverty which begs a question why Pakistan has been unable to make significant strides in improving nutrition indicators for children over the past few decades. Despite the recognized importance of the problem in national and international forums, researc...

In recent years the adverse impacts of climate change on the natural environment and the multiple threats it poses to human health, especially in the Global South, have become increasingly evident and these are likely to increase in the near future, with more people likely to be risk. This study investigates households' vulnerability to public heal...

Despite a substantial decline in poverty, an increase in access to water and sanitation and a large decline in open defecation, diarrhea and stunting rates in Pakistan show few signs of a decline. This report provides evidence that the policy focus on eliminating open defecation rather than the safe management of fecal waste has been largely respon...

This paper contributes to the literature on determinants of the export diversification by introducing related variety (RV) and unrelated variety (UV) in the analysis in addition to the traditional entropy based measure at three-digit Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) level, overall variety (OV). RV measures variety in cognitively r...

The paper extends the findings of the Coe and Helpman (Eur Econ Rev 39(5):859–887, 1995) model of R&D spillovers by considering foreign direct investment (FDI) as a channel for knowledge spillovers in addition to imports. Deeper insights on the issue are provided by examining the inter-relationship between knowledge spillovers from imports and inwa...

In this paper we endeavour to assess the role of governance as a precondition to human capital-led growth. Specifically, we use rule of law, control of corruption, regulatory quality and government effectiveness as indicators of governance in addition to a variable representing the average of the four governance indicators. We divided our data samp...

Foreign Inflow plays an important role in country ’s development. The importance of foreign inflows is not limited to developing countries; developed and emerging economies also attract foreign inflows to supplement their resources to sustain growth. The importance of foreign inflow in Pakistan is very well acknowledged and documented, however the...

This essay was written for an essay competition organised by Pakistan council for Research in Water Resources. It explains the current water scenario and prediction about future condition.

This paper is an attempt to investigate the causal relationships among agriculture gross domestic product (GDP) and exports in Pakistan by using time series data for the period between 1971 and 2007. There are several efforts reflecting greater interest in exploring the possible relation between the international trade and economic growth. Increasi...

This study is an attempt to analyze the imp act of Edible Oil Deficit on Food Expenditure in Pakistan for the period 1971-2008. Edible oil deficit is one of the major concerns for the policy-makers in Pakistan. Despite of having agriculture based economy; Pakistan is unable to fulfil her domestic demand of edible oil by local production. This situa...

This paper is an attempt to investigate the causal relationships among agriculture and exports in Pakistan by using time series data for the period between 1971 and 2007. There are several efforts reflecting greater interest in exploring the possible relation between the international trade and economic growth. Increasing of Gross Domestic Product...

This essay was written for the essay competition organized by Ministry of Youth Affairs Government of Pakistan. It discusses the possible determinant factors of youth crimes in Pakistan and provides logical suggestion to tackle the problem.

Purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to increase the level of knowledge pertaining to nutritional status of preschoolers and to identify/quantifying the relative importance of various socioeconomic and environmental factors which may have significant role in determining nutritional status of preschoolers in Pakistan. Design/methodology/appro...