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Looking Back: How Pakistan became an Asian Tiger in 2050
Abstract and Figures
The book presents an economic analysis of development using complexity as an approach and Pakistan as an example. It examines the political economy patterns that are evolving and emerging historically through the replicator dynamics of social mobility and incentive norms. It offers a unique view of development by identifying deep determinants of systemic change without which corrosive practices such as rent seeking, corruption and malgovernance will continue to tax economic performance productivity and poverty.
The book also presents a critique of current development thought and aid. The standard operating procedures of sector work through international consultants cooperating with the local fractured and self-serving governance structures to repeatedly try old themes has brought conflict to many places and Pakistan is a good example. The complexity approach offers a good alternative to developing deep reform to allow better policy and development to emerge.
The book is deliberately written in a narrative form to appeal to everyone.
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... The footprint of the government on Pakistan economy is significantly large i.e., 67 percent of the GDP of Pakistan (Haque & Ullah, 2022). The efficient utilization of the state-owned real estate is pertinent to realize significantly large revenue streams for the state Haque, 2017;Haque, Aslam, & Qasim, 2024). State captured real estate is almost found in all the cities across Pakistan. ...
Pakistan's economy is hindered by bureaucratic inefficiencies, or "sludge." The Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) has undertaken various sludge audits (1-3) to examine this issue under the mentorship of Dr. Nadeem ul Haque. This study develops a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) framework to account for the total economic cost of sludge across different sectors. Different sectors are impacted by sludge in varying degrees. The construction sector is hit hardest by permitting and red tape, while real estate might see growth by 2028 as construction-related sludge reduces. Household demand drops across the board, particularly in construction and pharmaceuticals. Increased demand for imported construction materials and drugs suggests weaknesses in domestic production. The study calls for reducing sludge by streamlining bureaucracy, boosting local production, and promoting R&D in pharmaceuticals.
... As Haque (2015Haque ( , 2017 and Framework of Economic Growth argue cities are markets that facilitate economic growth, they must be allowed to grow. Markets create order, which manifests itself in the form of cities, based on price signals. ...
Islamabad is currently in the process of reviewing its master plan. Like most cities in the developing world, Islamabad is facing insufficient public utilities, lack of affordable housing, commercial and office space, decaying public infrastructure, illegal and haphazard development and mushrooming slums. What was planned to be ‘a city of the future’ by its architect C. A. Doxiadis and named ‘Islamabad—the Beautiful’ by its residents is turning into another case of urban decay (see also PIDE Policy Viewpoints 2, 12 and 13 and Haque and Nayab, 2020).
... The country needs to have scores of cranes working every hour to be completing large construction projects. Haque (2017) has, time and again, asked the question, "where are the tower cranes?". The answer despondently persists as "nowhere in Pakistan." ...
Acting on the PTI’s election manifesto of building 5 million houses, the Prime Minister of Pakistan announced an incentive package for the construction sector in April 2020. This package focused on providing tax cuts, subsidies, and reducing the regulatory burden for creating a conducive environment for construction activities. Since construction in Pakistan is a labour-intensive sector, it was hoped that the package would help the PTI government, albeit partly, deliver its other election promise of creating 10 million jobs. The ancillary by-products were livelihood opportunities and affordable housing for the poor, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The package promised to address housing deficiency, provide affordable housing, generate economic activity, and provide employment. We evaluate this package on two dimensions, namely: Relevance and Effectiveness. We have also conducted a small perception survey to gauge the response of the end-users.
... 8 For example, Haque (1999) shows that reforms have failed in Pakistan because the intent was just to get money from donor to release immediate fiscal constraints. Further, this process of foreign aid and donor's assistance has led to creation of intellectual and institutional gaps as shown in Haque (2018aHaque ( , 2018b colonialism. First of such source that we highlighted deals with how technological frontier for the colonial states evolved as prices of African slaves changed with colonisation defining the incentives for mercantilist and progressive colonialism differently. ...
This paper provides a critique of Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson's (2001, 2002) notion that rests on the hypothesis of exogenous imposition of colonial institutions onto their respective colonies based on conditions for their settlement. Our research brings forth the logical loopholes in Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (AJR) by constructing arguments against the oversimplified assumption of exogenous imposition of colonial institutions in explaining the differences in development today. To prove our point, we build on two main arguments from history to show that some degree of endogeneity did indeed exist in colonial institutions that were imposed on the colonies. Our first argument revolves around the theme that how the Atlantic slave trade evolved with colonialism and had meaningful technological and institutional consequences in the colonial metropolitan state. And these evolving conditions in colonizer's mother country not only shaped incentives for mercantilist colonialism at one level and at the other became the base of institutional setup of progressive forms. In our second part of the argument, we demonstrate the role of the native agency either in the form of local's formal or informal pre-colonial institutions or in the form of their hold within the colonies, which were all important in shaping what path colonizers eventually took for the institutional transfer. Based on these historical evidence, it is concluded that colonial institutions cannot be assumed as an exogenous transfer based on the notion of settlement as per AJR, rather it can be best described as an evolving fit between colonial and pre-colonial institutions.
... The Islamabad Master Plan, being no exception to master plans elsewhere, has resulted in forced urban development and stifling of economic activities. With the market driven forces and demands, the cities are moving from master plans and rather market forces and investors are to determine the nature of buildings and developments in cities now (Haque, 2015(Haque, , 2017. The same has also happened to Islamabad as the master plan has been Han (2020) reported that most of the provinces are suffering from urban sprawl. ...
Urbanization in Pakistan is increasing at 3% annually, the highest in South Asia. 50% of the population is expected to urbanize by 2025. The capital city of Pakistan, Islamabad has experienced phenomenal increase in the urban population and extent in the last four decades. The aim of this research was to analyze the urban sprawl of Islamabad and changes in the Land Use and Land Cover (LULC), with the help of satellite images. LULC statics were extracted from Landsat Multi-Spectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) images, for the years 1979, 1989, 1999, 2008 and 2019. There is an increase of 377 sq. km in built-up areas and slight increase of 47 sq km in the agriculture land. The forest cover has been reduced by 83 sq km and the water bodies have also reduced. The barren land has experienced an unprecedented decrease of 333 sq km in the meanwhile. The master plan is under revision to regularize such uncontrolled constructions and accommodate the increased demand. The city, as a result, has been facing issues of water supply, sanitation, transportation etc. This has seriously jeopardized the master plan of the city.
Since the first Five Year Plan, Pakistan’s development policy has been modelled around the development philosophy of Dr. Mahboob Ul Haq and the Harvard Advisory Group (HAQ/HAG). As a result, the key features of the country’s policy over the past six decades, as summarised by Haque (2020), 1 have revolved around: (1) A focus on building physical infrastructure through discrete projects of sectors in the economy, with infrastructure having a share of about 80 percent in the PSDP. (2) Planning to develop medium term budget to finance sectoral hardware. (3) Seeking foreign aid to meet financing gap in the plan given an expected shortfall in domestic savings. This approach has led to: (1) An excessive focus on “brick and mortar” development. (2) Fragmented projects as Planning Commission was weakened by repeated BoP crises and resorting to IMF programmes. (3) Weakening standards on project development implementation and cost – due to increased politicisation.
Pakistan throughout its history has seen regime changes from more democratic to 1 more authoritarian and vice versa. This has meant that the country’s political and social landscapes have remained volatile and unstable. Many economists argue that this instability has partly contributed to the stifled and irregular growth patterns in the country. The average GDP growth rate has been irregular from decade to decade, with an overall long-run downward trend
This paper argues that successful public policy requires engaged research developing ideas and evidence from diverse vantage points. Pakistan's social science research remains fragmented, under-resourced and dependent on external agendas. We describe a five-year pilot programme to enhance Pakistan's research culture. Seventy-two crowd-sourced and competitively-selected projects at 46 geographically dispersed institutions were supported. Provincial universities were empowered and networking with the better-placed metropolitan institutions proved mutually beneficial to scholarship. Substantial research outputs were completed in important areas of policy. We conclude that such multi-year commitments to review and network engagement are vital to strengthening policy capacity.
We investigate parents’ perceptions of various educational systems and their impact on the decision to either send their children to school, or engage them in other childhood activities. Childhood activities are categorised as follows: secular schooling, religious (non-secular schooling), child labour, child labour combined with secular schooling, and leisure (inactivity). The paper uses the household survey data of 2,496 children, 963 households, and 40 villages in Pakistan. A Multinomial Probit Model analysed the impact of various socio-economic variables on the likelihood of choosing an activity for children. Results indicate that the following factors influence the parents’ decisions in selection of activities for their children: the parents’ level of education, mother’s relative authority in household decisions, degree of religiosity of the head of household, beliefs in tribal norms, household income, and proximity to the school. The findings provide insignificant evidence to support the “luxury axiom” hypothesis that children only work when their families are unable to meet their basic needs.
Since the 1 st Five Year Plan, Pakistan's development policy has been modelled around the development philosophy of Dr. Mahboob Ul Haq and the Harvard Advisory Group (HAQ/HAG). As a result, the key features of the country's policy over the past six decades, as summarized by Haque (2020), have revolved around:
(1) A focus on building physical infrastructure through discrete projects of sectors in the economy, with infrastructure having a share of about 80% in the PSDP.
(2) Planning to develop medium term budget to finance sectoral hardware.
(3) Seeking foreign aid to meet financing gap in the plan given an expected shortfall in domestic savings.
This approach has led to:
(1) An excessive focus on "brick and mortar" development.
(2) Fragmented projects as Planning Commission was weakened by repeated BoP crises and resorting to IMF programs.
(3) Weakening standards on project development implementation and cost-due to increased politicization.
2010) argues that post -independence rulers of Pakistan have "steadily regressed
- Ilhan Niaz
Ilhan Niaz, The Culture of Power and Governance of Pakistan 1947-2008 (Oxford University Press, 2010) argues that post -independence
rulers of Pakistan have "steadily regressed" into a pre-British form of
governance in the post-Independence period.
Fredrich Hayek made this very valuable point in his classic "The Use of Knowledge in Society
Fredrich Hayek made this very valuable point in his classic "The Use
of Knowledge in Society" America Economic Review September 1945
http://www.kysq.org/docs/Hayek_45.pdf