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The paper empirically examines old-age security hypothesis to explain fertility rates in South Asia. Panel data is used for the period 1972-2013 for seven South Asian countries which include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The estimated results reveal that in South Asia fertility rate decreases with the increase in financial development. Thus, the findings support old-age security hypothesis that parents use children as financial instruments to secure their old age. This paper validates the theory that the availability of alternative financial tools reduces the incentives of households to have large offspring. Infant mortality is also shown an important factor for high fertility rate in South Asia. This implies that households cover their risk from losing children by producing more children. The results also reveal that fertility rate decreases with the increase in per capita income, which implies that households treat children as inferior good in this region. In other words, households prefer quality of children over quantity of children when their income level increases. The results have also shown that fertility decreases with the increase in education, urbanization, agriculture productivity and industrialization. The study has some important policy implications.

The paper empirically examines the effects of trade liberalisation on income inequality in China and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation countries. Panel data analysis is conducted for the period of 1973 to 2012. The results show that liberal trade policies have increased income inequality in these countries. These results are robust to alternative liberalisation measures. The control variables used have differing effects on income distribution. Per capita income has an increasing effect on income inequality, while education, financial development, financial openness, democracy, and government size are shown to reduce income inequality. These outcomes can be expected to have important policy implications for the use of trade liberalisation in these countries.

The paper empirically examines the effects of trade liberalization on undernourishment and income inequality in South Asian countries (sacs). For empirical analysis data is collected for the period 1972-2013 for five South Asian countries which include Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Panel fixed effect technique is used to estimate the model. The estimated results reveal that undernourishment has decreased while income inequality has increased in the region after liberalization. Economic development has reduced both undernourishment and income inequality. The results also endorse the role of agriculture factors in reducing undernourishment and the role of education, urban bias, and political democratization in reducing income inequality in sacs. These results are robust to alternative equation specifications and openness measures. The results provide some important policy implications. It is suggested that South Asian countries have to cope with the problem of malnourishment with high agriculture development and economic growth.

This paper explores the empirical association between democracy and per capita output growth in Pakistan using data for the period 1947 to 2006. The findings of the paper indicate a weak negative association between democracy and output growth. Consistent with some current empirical literature, democracy is also found to influence output growth indirectly. The empirical results are robust to different democracy variables and output growth equation specifications. The empirical findings also highlight the role of other variables in determining output growth and, except for rising oil prices, show its positive linkage to physical and human capital, government consumption, openness of trade practices and inflation. JEL classification: C22, O43 Keywords: Democracy, Growth, Time-series