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This paper aims to presents one of the first direct micro-econometric impact of competitive industries (based on revealed comparative advantage [RCA] between Pakistan and China) on household welfare in Pakistan using semi-parametric matching technique.

The study has also measured and identified the industrial competitiveness in both agricultural and non-agricultural (manufacturing) industries using RCA approach. RCA at the four-digit ISIC level are matched to household survey data (Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement) for 2013-2014 to represent the competitive industries in which the household’s higher earner is employed.

The findings of the study reveal that the China–Pakistan ex-post treatment effect (industrial competitiveness) provides welfare-improving effects. Furthermore, on this behalf, this study further assesses ex-ante treatment effects of recently signed China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) on household welfare and suggests that CPEC would boost further trade liberalization and, therefore, would lead to industrial competitiveness and hence economic growth.

Paper contributes to two streams of literature. First, it measures and identifies the industrial competitiveness in both agricultural and non-agricultural industries using RCA approach; and second, it assesses the welfare of those households associated with these industries using semi-parametric propensity score matching technique.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of globalization and credit market imperfections on child labour.

Analysis is based on cross-country regression framework, incorporating 129 developing countries for the period 1970-2010.

The findings indicate that countries that are more open to trade and having higher foreign direct investment inflow have lower incidence of child labour. As child labour in export-related industries is hard to find, trade sanctions may not have a significant effect on child labour. Further study concludes that income of the bottom quartile of the population is the best representation of the income of the poor when studying child labour.

The study uses the data compiled by International Labour Organization (ILO). Though much of the variation in the data is because of the adjustments made by ILO, this is the only comparable cross-country estimates available. Hence in the absence of the cross-country comparable estimates, many empirical studies have used this data set (e.g. Cigno et al., 2002; Dehejia and Gatti, 2002; Rogers and Swinnerton, 2001). This study acknowledges this limitation but again in the absence of any comparable estimates, the assessment is also based on this data set.

Study contributes in the literature by comparing the effect of export and trade and by exploring the effect of an alternate measure of the income, estimated by using Gini coefficient, on child labour. Further studies exploring the effect of globalization did not explore the presence of imperfect credit market, however, this study has explored the effect of credit market imperfections as well.

Several studies have provided empirical evidence that female labor force participation rate exhibits a U‐shape during the process of economic development. The purpose of this paper is to explore the existence of U‐shape relationship in the case of Pakistan and if it does exist, what factors determine this U‐shape relationship?

For the estimation purpose data according to provinces and regions are pooled for three years. The model is estimated using a simple fixed effect test.

The results affirm the existence of U‐shaped relationship. Estimation of the pooled data attributed this U‐shape relationship with female education attainment, sectoral employment share, unemployment rate, wages and marital status. Results confirm that high rate of economic development is encouraging the female participation in the labor force by increasing the work opportunities for females. The females are taking full advantage of these increased opportunities by increasing their level of education attainment. Research limitations/implications – In testing the U‐shape hypothesis, household expenditure on fuel consumption representing level of economic development in the country is used as the data on GDP are not available at the provincial level.

This paper recommends that skill‐based education programmes should be promoted so that females could be absorbed in the formal labor market. It also recommends measures to decrease unemployment rates and improve labor market conditions.

The paper is first of its kind as it applied pooled data technique for the estimation of U‐shape relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent and the effect of socio‐economic and demographic factors that lead to the phenomenon of child labor in the fishing sector of Balochistan (province of Pakistan).

In order to explore the objectives, the paper first develops simple hypothesis followed by descriptive and regression analysis.

The findings of the paper show that in the coastal areas about 30 percent of the children are involved in fishing. It is observed that the main cause of child labor is not poverty it comes out to be low quality of education, lack of job opportunity, and lack of development.

The data used for the assessment cover wide‐spread coastal areas but still have some limitation for several reasons. First, it is rapid assessment done to gain the first hand knowledge about the extent of child labor and their socio‐economic culture they belong too. Second, the official data do not include information on education and employment facilities in these towns. Thus, severity may not be truly reflected.

Education with training needed to improve fishing skill may help in this regard. The state of education also needs improvement as high illiteracy and dropout rates reflect inadequacy.

Extent of child labor in these towns is not reported by any official statistics. This paper attempts to provide the picture of the severity of the problems and its probable causes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the causal links between, foreign direct investment (FDI), openness through trade, poverty, value added of agriculture sector as share of GDP, urban population and child labor by using annual data for Pakistan over the period 1970‐2003.

The methodological framework for causality testing is a multivariate vector autoregression (VAR) model. This permits investigation of the importance of factors on the incidence of child labor in Pakistan. More generally, this study seek to establish the causal link between these factors and child labor, which might suggest important implications for eradicating child labor's strategies for Pakistan.

This study presents strong and robust evidence that in the long‐run trade openness raises the output of the exportable sector and increases the demand for child labor as well as the child‐wage. However, FDI is found to lower the incidence of child labor, indicating that because of low labor standards and a high incidence of child labor, Pakistan is not attracting a greater inflow of FDI.

This study provides several implications for the policy debate on globalization and child labor and end by suggesting that rich countries should restrict the sale of goods from developing countries that lack or do not enforce child labor laws. Yet many doubt the ability of trade sanctions to eliminate child labor.

This could be the first ever effort in describing child labor incidence with the help of VAR technique for Pakistan.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how many rural women have access to finance. It also explores the additional constraint faced by them in accessing the credit.

For the estimation purpose, multivariate logit regression is used, taking borrowing any credit as dependent variable.

Results indicate that women lack easier access to formal credit and the socio‐economic, cultural background of the family significantly impact probability of borrowing. More specifically, result indicates that female own age, marital status and employment bring self‐confidence and reliability that encourage female borrowing.

In the absence of any recent nation‐wide data about micro‐credit, cross‐section survey, the Rural Financial Market Survey is used to examine the factors affecting the demand for borrowing.

This paper proposes that government should implement education programmes in order to create awareness towards role of women in economic development. Moreover, to overcome the cultural constraints, information should also be disseminated through influential media.

While it is widely recognized that, demand for credit is severely affected by socio‐economic, cultural and personal characteristics, this has rarely been confirmed earlier. There are numbers of studies documented on borrowing all focus on the issue of formal and informal sources ignoring the above determinants. This paper attempts to do so.

In the current dynamic world, organizations required rapid changes to meet the increasing demands of their customers. On the other hand, the practice side claims that the majority of the organizational change attempts fail due to resistance from the employee side. Based on the behavioral theory of leadership, the authors examined the relationship between ethical leadership and organizational change with moderated mediation effect of behavioral resistance to change and commitment to change on the stated relationship.

Data were obtained from 333 employees, selected at random, in three waves (i.e. pre-change, during change and post-change) using survey methods from services sector organizations operating in Pakistan.

The authors found that ethical leadership was positively linked to organizational change and this relation was partially mediated by the commitment to change. Further, behavioral resistance to change weakened the relationship between ethical leadership and commitment to change.

The current study illuminates the importance of ethical leaders in the organizational change process, and empirical findings also gave an important direction to build change commitment in employees to reach positive results. Further, change leaders should use ethical practices in the workplace during organizational change initiatives to deal with behavioral resistance to change.

This study links ethical leadership with organizational change using the behavioral theory of leadership, an unexplored area in the existing literature that gives a new insight to academia and practice side officials to successfully implement any organizational change initiative.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on micro-businesses owned by women borrowers of microfinance institutions and to provide policy suggestions to assist women entrepreneurs in managing such an unexpected crisis from a qualitative perspective within developing countries such as Pakistan.

The study adopts a qualitative research design to explore the impact of COVID-19 on women’s entrepreneurial activities. Seven women entrepreneurs were selected and semi-structured interviews with focused group discussion under case study research design are used. Thereby providing a contemporary view of the issues faced by women entrepreneurs in the period of huge social and economic upheaval.

The results provide valuable insights about how the COVID-19 crisis affected women entrepreneurs by particularly considering household income, business sales, lifestyle and mental health. The liquidation of women-led businesses indicated the necessity to reconsider creativity and digitalization for business survival. Moreover, the results also revealed that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the physical, mental and economic well-being of women highlights the need for considering gender gap issues in forming response policies for COVID-19 in developing countries.

As the COVID-19 crisis is a recent and existing phenomenon, this study is among the first to explore particularly the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on micro-enterprises mainly owned and managed by women. Thereby claiming that COVID-19 not only physically but also psychologically affected women entrepreneurs. Moreover, the study highlights a need of skill focused training programs for women entrepreneurs to make sure that they can protect their businesses during such difficult times.

Based on action regulation theory (ART), this study aims to test the impact of individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) training on small business owner career success (financial attainment, satisfaction and achievement). Moreover, this relationship was unpacked through a dual mediation model of IEO behaviour and career resilience.

A four-wave, longitudinal randomized controlled field experiment was conducted in which 527 small business owners participated from Lahore, Pakistan (training group = 256, control group = 271). The data analysis was done via ANCOVAs (group comparison) and PROCESS Model 6 (for serial mediation).

The results demonstrated that after getting IEO training, the small business owners had increased IEO behaviour, career resilience and career success as compared to their counterparts in the control group. In addition, the effect of IEO training on career success was attributed to the underlying role of IEO behaviour and career resilience development.

This is one of the few studies that have demonstrated the impact of IEO training on the career-related outcomes based on the action regulation perspective.