This study aims to identify risk management strategies undertaken by the commercial banks of Balochistan, Pakistan, to mitigate or eliminate credit risk. The findings of the study are significant as commercial banks will understand the effectiveness of various risk management strategies and may apply them for minimizing credit risk. This explanatory study analyses the opinions of the employees of selected commercial banks about which strategies are useful for mitigating credit risk. Quantitative data was collected from 250 employees of commercial banks to perform multiple regression analyses, which were used for the analysis. The results identified four areas of impact on credit risk management (CRM): corporate governance exerts the greatest impact, followed by diversification, which plays a significant role, hedging and, finally, the bank’s Capital Adequacy Ratio. This study highlights these four risk management strategies, which are critical for commercial banks to resolve their credit risk.

This empirical research is aimed at testing the relationship of the big five personality traits namely openness to experience, extraversion, consciousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and risk aversion with the investment intention of individual investors belonging to Balochistan, Pakistan. The primary data is collected through a self-administered questionnaire (a structured form that consists of a series of closed-ended and open-ended questions) from a sample of 397 active individual investors belonging to different districts of the province. The data is empirically analyzed by applying the Partial Least Square (PLS) path modeling technique by using the estimation package available in Smart-PLS. The findings of this study suggest that all the variables are statistically significant with investors' investment intention with risk aversion as the strongest predictor. Moreover, openness to experience, extraversion, consciousness, agreeableness, and risk are significantly and positively related to an investor's investment intention, whereas neuroticism is negatively related to an investor's investment intention. The results extended by this study can be used by financial planners and investment bankers to channelize the available financial resources in diversified portfolios. The results will help financial planners to make available diverse investment alternatives for investors in Balochistan, thus catering to their unique needs. Academia must offer courses on contemporary finance paradigm based on behavioral finance to enable future business graduates to make wise financial decisions.

The study aims to empirically examine the determinants of bank margins from Pakistan, an emerging South Asian economy. To elucidate the importance of the Pakistani banking sector, secondary data has been used, which was extracted from the annual accounts of twentyfour Pakistani scheduled commercial banks (20 conventional, four full-fledged Islamic) over a sample period of 2006 to 2017. The factors identified in the dealership model and the subsequent empirical developments in the dealership model categorized as bank-specific, diversification, regulatory, and industry concentration are analyzed by applying the most-common linear dynamic panel-data estimator, the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator, developed by Arellano and Bond (1991). The findings reveal that, among the bank-specific variables, funding cost, credit risk, managerial efficiency, market share, and operating cost are significant predictors of bank margins. For diversification variables employed in the study, both variables including net non-interest income and asset diversity are as well significant predictors of bank margins. It is also found that the market concentration variable proxied by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) is significantly predicting bank margins. Subsequently, one of the regulatory variables, the opportunity cost of holding reserves, and one bank-specific variable, the degree of risk aversion, are insignificant in the model.

This study examines the relationship between the financial socialization agents, attitude toward money, and financial literacy with the mediating role of financial self-efficacy and the moderating role of mindfulness. The self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection from higher education institutions using the convenience sampling method because the sampling frame was not available. The data were tested using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in smart PLS. The results indicated a positive relationship between financial self-efficacy, financial socialization agents, attitude toward money, mindfulness, and financial literacy. The finding of mediation analysis suggests the significant mediation effect of financial self-efficacy between attitude toward money and financial social agents with financial literacy. The mediation of financial self-efficacy between attitude toward money and financial literacy has the greatest impact which indicates that students with positive attitude and self-efficacy create high financial literacy. Whereas mindfulness positively moderates the relation of attitude toward money and financial literacy and negatively moderates the relation of financial self-efficacy and financial literacy while mindfulness does not moderate the relation of financial socialization agents and financial literacy. The findings of this research are of use to different stakeholders who are users or regulators of financial institutions because enhancing financial literacy has become a priority.

A Zea may is an important cereal crop. To nourish human and livestock, it is very important that the quality of maize grain and fodder must be higher. A study was conducted to evaluate maize accessions for grain and fodder quality traits. Results indicated that higher heritability was found for nutrient detergent fiber, fodder cellulose, fodder crude fiber, fodder crude and fodder moisture percentage while genetic advance was higher for fodder cellulose, fodder crude protein and fodder ash percentage. High significant genotypic and phenotypic correlation was found among grain protein, oil and starch percentage, nutrient detergent fiber, fodder cellulose, fodder crude fiber & protein and fodder moisture percentage. The higher cumulative additive effect was recorded for acid detergent fiber, fodder crude fiber; nutrient detergent fiber and fodder cellulose suggested that selections may be made to develop synthetic varieties for better quality. Higher dominance effect and degree of dominance indicated that selection may be useful for the development of good quality maize hybrids through heterosis breeding programme. Principle component bi-plot analysis indicated that B-11×EV-347, B-11, Sh-139, EV-1097×E-322, Sh-139×B-316, B-327×E-322, B-316, Raka-poshi, B-11×Pop/209, B-336×EV-340, B-327×E-322, B-327×F-96, EV-1097×E-322, Rakaposhi×EV-347, EV-1097×Pop/209 and EV-1097×EV-340 performed better for grain and fodder quality and may be used for improvement of grain and fodder quality of maize.