Gendered Personality Traits, Academic Programs and Academic Performance of Pakistani University Students: An Evidence From Pakistan

The academic performance reflects students’ success or failure to achieve learning objectives and goals in their academic endeavours. Previous studies have highlighted the major influence of students’ gender, personalities, and academic programs on their academic performance. Different cultures, social settings, and educational systems promote different perceptions of gender roles that can produce different preferences of subjects and personality traits. Hence, the study aimed to assess the direct and total effects of Pakistani university students’ gender, personality traits, and subject choices or academic programs on their academic performance. The Structure Equation Modeling approach was applied in two stages to find out the impacts of gender, personality traits, and academic programs on students’ academic performance. The results showed that the gender variable is related to students’ personality traits and the academic program. Although, gender did not have a direct impact on students’ grades, but its total effect through personality traits and the academic program was significant. The personality traits were not found to have a direct or total significant effect on students’ academic performance. The academic performances of students of some academic programs were higher as compared to students of other academic programs. The stereotype gendered personality traits and subject choices were present in students. The students’ perceptions of stereotype gender roles, consequent personality traits, and subject choices should be intervened to improve the academic performance of both genders.

Academic Service Learning for Underprivileged Communities in Pakistan: Enhancing Development beyond Economics

This study focuses on development of disadvantaged communities via an Academic Service Learning project, incorporated in the PhD coursework of a private university. School teachers from an underprivileged community in a charitable village school of Baluchistan were given training by the students after doing interviews for needs analysis and developing and implementing a workshop based on their needs. As part of the workshop evaluation process, teachers’ perspectives were examined after teachers had incorporated the workshop strategies in their classrooms. Findings were highly positive, because teachers demonstrated enhancement in learning and constructive gain in scholarship which they could transfer to students and to other teachers in the community. Data from students who had carried out the project, accentuated improved learning and a keen desire for voluntary participation in service learning projects for helping underprivileged communities. This study not only contributes to the body of literature in academic and community service learning in the Pakistani educational context, but elaborates on the value of factors beyond economics for advancement of deprived segments of society.

Impact of Public Infrastructure Investment on Private Infrastructure Investment

The aim of this paper is to find the relationship among government and private capital formation in Pakistan during the period 1981 to 2018. This study employs Auto Regressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) bound test. The results show that government infrastructure investment negatively effects on private infrastructure capital formation in long run and short run, indicating that government infrastructure investment crowds out private infrastructure investment. In determining the role of the government in investment and liberalization policies, the results of this paper have important policy implications.

Factors Contributing Towards Women Employability: An Impact Assessment of a Women Skill Development Training Program

It is an impact assessment study of a women skill development training program namely District Industrial Homes in Punjab. A quasi experimental (ex post facto) research design has been applied to develop a counterfactual relationship between the outcomes of this program and the demographic and personal characteristics of the women trainees that have get training from the program within time period of 2016 to 2019. The analysis has observed that computer application and stitching/ cutting are most popular trades among women. Further, it has been observed as the time period since the women has gotten training increased the visibility of trained women in market is decreased. The majority of the women were unmarried, of age 15 to 25 years and majority of them have education level intermediate or above. The female work participation was much higher among the women respondents, however, majority of them were unemployed and had no utilization of their skills in daily life business. The data shows that all the unemployed women were unmarried and all the entrepreneur women were either divorced or widow. Another interesting fact have been revealed from the bivariate analysis that all the women that were unemployed have education metric or below metric and all the women that have any employment status have intermediate or above education level. The women employment status has been found more in families with large family size comparatively and all the women that did not practice the veil were unemployed. The female work participation and women employment status have been observed relatively high in low income families. The multinomial regression analysis have established that education level, mother’s education level, family size and own family house contribute positively and age dependency ratio, female work participation, veil and family employment (total) has negative impact on women employment status.

How Do Organizational Commitment and Work Engagement Mediate Between Human Resource Management Practices and Job Performance?

The main goal of this study is to empirically determine the mediating roles of organizational commitment and work engagement between the relationship of human resource management practices and job performance of the faculty members working in public sector universities of Pakistan. Data were obtained by self-administrated questionnaire. This study used stratified random sampling. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) has been applied by using SMART PLS registered version 3; to test the statistical model. The study found that work engagement and affective organizational commitment has partially mediating relationship with human resource management practices and job performance. Social Exchange Theory used as under pinning theory to develop theoretical model. Data were collected from 247 faculty member working in public sector universities of Pakistan.

How Behavioral Factors Influence Investment Performance of Individual Investors in Pakistan Stock Market: A Moderated Mediation Approach

The primary objective of study is to know the influence of behavioral factors on investor’s investment decision and investment performance. Four behavioral factors as herding, prospect factors and market factors are used in this study and financial literacy as a moderating variable among the behavioral factors and investment decision. We use the questionnaire to collect primary data from individual investors actually trading in Pakistan Stock Exchange. For data analysis, we utilize AMOS software and Hayes Process tool in two stages. The findings reveal that behavioral factors positively influence investment decision and investment performance. But there is no moderating role of financial literacy. In addition to these, individual investors and security organizations can ultimately take advantage from the results of this research as a guide for their analysis and forecasting of security market trends in order to maximize the outcome and to improve their investment efficiency. Further, study recommended investigation of all investor types and in all financial markets including the behaviors of institutional investors along with behavioral financial factors; we should consider some economic factors that could have an impact on investors' decisions.

Economic Interactions among Stock Market Performance and Macroeconomic Variables with Mediating Role of Gold Prices Volatilities: An Evidence from Pakistan

In all emerging economies, one of the most challenging issues for investors is the multifaceted inter-relationship between volatility of gold prices and stock market index. During the COVID-19 sub-periods, gold has shown a strong hedging behavior against stock market performance. The main objective of this study was to quantify the long-run relationship among multiple independent macroeconomic variables (predictors) on stock market index (response variable) using the volatilities of gold prices as a mediator factor. This study applied the descriptive statistics, correlation, t-test and OLS multiple regression Model. The specific data comprised of period 2011-2020 regarding the fluctuations in gold prices, exchange rate, interest rate, inflation rate and performance of stock market index has been utilized. The statistical outputs of models showed that exchange rate (Dollar to PKR) was positively affecting the performance of Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE)-100 Index, whereas inflation rate and interest rate were negatively affecting the overall performance of KSE100 index. The findings of this study suggested that to achieve better performance of stock market, relatively low interest rate and inflation rate contribute a significant role. However, to increase the generalization capabilities of this study the impact of mentioned macroeconomic variables in other sectors like industrial production, oil & gas and energy sectors with wider time span can be more helpful.

An Analysis of the Outcome of Socio Economic Factors on Mobility and Changes in Consumption Pattern in Northern Punjab, Pakistan

The relationship between mobility and consumption pattern has been neglected in the past particularly in developing countries. Socio-economic mobility is the movement of individuals, social groups, or categories of people in the layers or strata between two different periods. For effective policy making, it is important to gauge the mobility pattern which portrays the socio-economic changes of society over the period as opposed to at one point in time. This brings up the need to examine the way in which elements of socio-economic mobility impacts the consumption in the emerging class of the society. Socio-economic factors and their influence on intra-temporal household mobility reveal the education as an important mediating factor in Northern Punjab. Whereas, opportunity of education and occupation work together to bridge the gap between an increase in household income and socio-economic status. This study concludes that education and occupation based mobility of households divert their consumption pattern toward more cultural goods. The emerging class seems to be attracted more towards conspicuous consumption including private schools, health care, shopping and the consumer goods to enhance their living standards.

Achieving Impact of Network Factors on Supply Chain Performance: A Case of Textile Sector of Pakistan

This study elaborates the importance of network perspective in driving performance outcomes especially in the context of agriculture (Textile) supply chains. The impact of network factors (i.e. actors, resources, and activities) on overall supply chain performance have been explored. By deploying survey, a two-stage cluster sampling was used to attain study objectives. The Textile firms from Punjab and Sindh were selected for data collection. Through a structured questionnaire, 482 responses were generated and analyzed using PLS-SEM. The findings of the study confirmed that Network Actors (Textile Firms), the activities they perform, and the resources they have, generate a significant and positive impact on supply chain performance. The study recommends the need for understanding the role of integrative initiatives between the studied variables, i.e. network factors. Further, it is argued that integrated Network Factors can generate a significant impact on Supply Chain Performance.

Application of Markov Regime Switching Autoregressive Model to Gold Prices in Pakistan

The goal of this study is to investigate the performance of the Markov regime switching autoregressive (MRS-AR) model to estimate and forecast the gold prices in Pakistan. Initial analysis of the data covering from January 1995 to January 2019 reveals the existence of nonstationarity, heteroscedasticity, and structural changes. The dynamics of the data are studied in two distinct regimes. The empirical analysis provides evidence that the regime shifts are mattered and MRS-AR model is found to be suitable even in the case of nonstationarity. Moreover, it is worthwhile to note that the Markov regime switching successfully captures the nonlinearities and heteroscedasticity underlying the selected data and provides efficient forecasts. Based on empirical evidence it is recommended that the applications of regime switching models should be promoted in other fields of life.