Statistics and Econometrics

Arable farming is an intrinsically risky enterprise. Therefore, managing risks and uncertainties in agriculture is very important as it affects all sectors of the economy of a developing country like Pakistan. To do so, a whole suite of options is available to the farming community to safeguard against any type of risk. However, farmers’ behavior of the concurrent adoption of multiple risk management tools is largely ignored in previous studies and has formed the rationale for this research. Thus, the current study is intended to investigate farmers’ decisions of adopting risk management strategies (contract farming, off-farm income diversification, and farm credit use) and to examine the impacts of a variety of factors on farmers’ risk management decisions. The present study is carried out in four districts of Punjab province, Pakistan with a focus on hybrid maize growers. A multivariate probit model is used to evaluate the impacts of independent variables on growers’ choices of ad...

This study investigates the impact of the mechanism of green public consumption policy on environmental equity and provides a feasible reference for the rational formulation of corresponding policies for China. Establish a mediation effect model using the stepwise regression and bootstrap analysis method, this study explores the direct and indirect effects of fiscal expenditure intensity on environmental equity. The results revealed that increasing fiscal expenditure on energy conservation and environmental protection cannot directly and significantly affect environmental equity, but it has a significant indirect positive impact on environmental equality through fiscal decentralization. It is also found that the impact of green public consumption policy on environmental equity varies in the eastern, central and western parts of China. Our findings indicated that the expenditure of energy conservation and environmental protection indirectly affects environmental equity through fiscal...

Understanding market integration in developing countries is an important issue in current research. This study is an attempt to analyze wheat market integration in Pakistan. Previous research on the subject has attempted at analyzing market integration in Pakistan's south and north Punjab regions, mainly relying on co-integration only and not considering advanced dynamic models and transaction costs to analyze the degree of integration. Therefore, this study is a first attempt to analyze the extent of market integration in the whole country using a dynamic model. Monthly wholesale price data of five regional markets from January 1988 to April 2011 are used for this study. Price series were tested for stationarity with the Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test and it was found that all prices are integrated of order one, commonly written as I(1). Co-integration was also identified in all price series pairs using Johansen's co-integration test. The Vector Error Correction Model (...

This study is a maiden empirical attempt to examine the long-run linkage between households’ usage of energy and economic progression in Pakistan from the period of 1972–2017. The Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) bounds testing method to co-integrate is employed to expose the causality dynamics between the variables such as households’ electricity consumption, households’ gas consumption, population growth, and per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Pakistan. The study adopted three renowned unit root approaches through the use of the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF), the Phillips-Perron (P-P), and Zivot-Andrews (Z&A) tests to check the stationarity of the variables, while the Johansen cointegration technique is also employed to assess the robustness of the long-run association. The validity of outcomes is also checked with casualty and variance decomposition. The estimated results reveal that, in both the short and long run, households’ electricity and gas usage positively a...

C hilli (Capsicum annuum L.) is one of the essential vegetable crops, which is cultivated almost all around the world and cultivated over an area of 1.856 million hectares with a production of 4.626 million tons . Nutritionally it is a rich source of vitamin A, C, E, P and contains medicinal properties . The major chilli producing countries are India,

In the current study, we have analyzed the impact of formal credit on agricultural output : Evidence from Pakistan. by using secondary data from 1996 to 2015. Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test was applied to check the stationarity of the data. Contrarily, the Johansen Co-integration test (Trace Statistic) was used to find out whether there exists a long run relationship between formal credit and agricultural output. The method of (OLS) was used to estimate the impact of formal credit on agricultural output. The empirical regression results indicate that the explanatory variable (formal credit) was statistically with coefficient of 0.860350. This means 1% increase in credit will increase the agricultural output by 0.86%. It is clear that impact of formal credit on agricultural output has positive and significant. Therefore, our study suggests that the procedure of credit should be made simple and flexible and financial institutions should launch crop insurance scheme in case of crop...

Wheat and rice are important staple food crops of South Asian countries including Pakistan. Wheat and rice trade across South Asian countries takes place not only to earn foreign exchange but to ensure food security also. Market integration and transmission of price information ow is required to facilitate the process of trade among South Asian countries. Previous research on the subject has attempted at analyzing market integration in Pakistan´s south and north Punjab regions, mainly relying on cointegration only and not considering advanced dynamic models and transaction costs to analyze the degree of integration. Therefore, this study is a first attempt to analyze the extent of market integration in the whole country using a TVECM model. Monthly wholesale price data of five regional markets of wheat and seven markets of rice from January 1988 to April 2011 were used for this study. Cointegration was also identified in all the price series pairs of wheat and ice using the Johansen...

This research was carried out in District Naushahro Ferozero, Sindh, Pakistan to examine the role of first microfinance bank financing in agricultural activities. A multistage technique was adopted to select (151) farmers from five villages each of three talkuas. Primary data were collected using structured questionnaires. Simple descriptive statistics such as means, frequencies and percentages were applied to analyze the data. The results show that, majority (46.4) % of the respondents were within the age range of 20 to 30 years, while 39.7 % of the respondent had primary education. 37.1 % of the respondents complained of high interest rate on loan obtained from the first microfinance bank as a main problem and 32% of the respondents complained of less amount disbursed. Based on the findings, the study recommended that agricultural credit for the small farmers should be disbursed on timely, interest rate should be reduce so as to enable small farmers acquire credit and pay back eas...

Polyethylene glycol (PEG-6000) is often used for the early establishment screening of the wheat genotypes against drought stress conditions. A collection of twenty-one newly developed bread wheat genotypes (developed through conventional and mutational breeding techniques) and four commercial drought tolerant check varieties were included in screening at seedling stage under three treatments of PEG-6000; T1 (0.5 MPa) and T2 (0.75 MPa) along with control T3 (distill water only). Three important early growth establishment traits like germination percentage, root length and shoot length of the wheat genotypes were observed. Significant variation among genotypic means regarding the observed traits was recorded at both the treatments. Wheat genotypes performance including check varieties for germination percentages was recorded as T1 (86.1%), T2 (72.4%) with reduction percentage of 12.5% and 33.8%. Root length of genotypes decreased by 37.0% in 0.5 MPa and 82.75% in 0.75 MPa, whereas, shoot length reduction was recorded as 38.9% (T1) and 84.6% (T2) as compared to control. This study provided essential information about the performance of advanced wheat genotypes under water stress conditions at early seedling establishment.

Callosobruchus spp. are global serious pests of pulses. Therefore, two studies were carried out to determine their distribution in three ecological zones of the Sindh, Pakistan along with their damage potential to major pulses. Survey was conducted from Zone-one (Ghotki, Sukkur and Larkana districts), Zone-two (Hyderabad, Mirpur Khas and Shaheed Benazirabad districts) and Zone-three (Karachi district) during March – April 2020. Grain samples of main pulses i.e., chickpea (channa), field pea (matar), cowpea (lobia), green lentil (moong) and daal channa were collected from three locations of each district and brought to Stored Grain Research Laboratory, Department of Entomology, Faculty of Crop Protection, Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam for further examination. Three pulse beetle species i.e., C. maculatus, C. chinensis and C. analis were identified from the collected pulse samples as the highest populations of adults, eggs, grubs and pupae was recorded from moong, followed by...

Vegetables hold very important and significant place in our diet, among vegetables chilli (Capsicum annuum L.)  is one of the most important vegetable crop of Pakistan. The vegetable’s market integration is the major problem in Pakistan and symbol of efficiency is integrated markets. The present study was conducted for domestic integration of four major chilli markets of Pakistan by using their monthly wholesale chilli prices of eighteen years (June 2000 to July 2019) by adopting Johan-sane integration approach. The Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test revealed that prices are integrated at first difference and results of pair wise integration showed chilli markets of Pakistan (Hyderabad, Lahore and Quetta) are integrated in the long-run and in short run with strong relationship, except Peshawar market because of long distance, price variation & seasonal effects. The results of Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) showed significant adjustment of prices in almost three pairs of market...