Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between working capital financing and firm performance for a sample of 437 non-financial Indian companies. In addition, this study examines the impact of financial constraints on working capital financing–performance relationship. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on secondary financial data of 437 non-financial Indian companies obtained from Capitaline database, pertaining to a period of 10 years (2007–2016). This study employs two-step generalized method of moments techniques to arrive at results. Findings Results of the study confirm the inverted U-shape relationship between working capital financing and firm performance. In addition, the authors also found that the firms that are likely to be less financially constrained can finance greater proportion of working capital using short-term debt. Originality/value This study contributes to the scant existing literature by testing the impact of financial constraints on the relationship between working capital financing and firm performance, representing a typical emerging market in India.

This is cross sectional study based on 304 households (couples) with wives age less than 48 years, chosen from urban locality (city Lahore). Fourteen religious, demographic and socioeconomic factors of categorical nature like husband education, wife education, husband's monthly income, occupation of husband, household size, husband-wife discussion, number of living children, desire for more children, duration of marriage, present age of wife, age of wife at marriage, offering of prayers, political view, and religiously decisions were taken to understand acceptance of family planning. Multivariate log-linear analysis was applied to identify association pattern and interrelationship among factors. The logit model was applied to explore the relationship between predictor factors and dependent factor, and to explore which are the factors upon which acceptance of family planning is highly depending. Log-linear analysis demonstrate that preference of contraceptive use was found to be consistently associated with factors Husband-Wife discussion, Desire for more children, No. of children, Political view and Duration of married life. While Husband's monthly income, Occupation of husband, Age of wife at marriage and Offering of prayers resulted in no statistical explanation of adoption of family planning methods.

Purpose This paper aims to empirically examine the long- and short-run relationship between macroeconomic indicators (exchange rates, interest rates, exports, imports, foreign reserves and the rate of inflation) and sovereign credit default swap (SCDS) spreads for Pakistan. Design/methodology/approach The authors apply the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to explore the level relationship between the macroeconomic variables and SCDS spreads. The error correction model is estimated to examine the short-run effects of the underlying macroeconomic variables on SCDS spreads. Finally, the long-run estimates are obtained in the ARDL framework. The study uses monthly data covering the period January 2001-February 2015. Findings The results indicate that there is a significant long-run relationship between the macroeconomic indicators and SCDS spreads. The estimated long-run coefficients reveal that both the interest rate and foreign exchange reserves are significantly and negatively, whereas imports and the rate of inflation are positively related to SCDS spreads. Yet, the results suggest that the exchange rate and exports do not have any significant long-run impact on SCDS spreads. The findings regarding the short-run relationship indicate that the exchange rate, imports and the rate of inflation are positively, whereas the interest rate and exports are negatively related to SCDS spreads. Practical implications The results suggest that State Bank of Pakistan should design monetary and foreign exchange rate polices to minimize unwanted variations in the exchange rate to reduce SCDS spreads. The results also suggest that it is incumbent to Pakistan Government to improve the balance of payments to reduce SCDS spreads. The findings also suggest that the inflation targeting policy can also help in reducing SCDS spreads. Originality/value This is the first study to examine the empirical determinants of SCDS spreads for Pakistan. Second, it estimates the short- and long-run effects in the ARDL framework. Third, it considers both internal and external empirical determinants of SCDS spreads.

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the impact of corruption (CP) on income inequality (IN) by considering the size of informal sector (IFS) at different levels of percentiles.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses a panel quantile regression approach for a sample of 50 developing countries. The study also applies panel co-integration (Kao residual co-integration test) in order to examine the long-run relationship between CP and IN.FindingsThis paper using a panel quantile regression approach shows that the high incidence of IFS in an economy marginalizes CP's positive effect because it works as a source of poor peoples' livelihood and skillful individuals. The spread of IFSs in the developing economies may raise earnings among groups and individuals who remain unemployed. Moreover, the results show that CP creates asymmetry in income distribution; fascinatingly, the asymmetric income distribution is high when CP is at higher percentiles.Research limitations/implicationsDue to non-availability of IFS, we restrict our analysis up to 50 developing countries.Practical implicationsCP devastates the effectiveness of institutions over time. Therefore, the government should have to take bold steps to reduce CP in society. Another policy implication of this study is that the government should reduce CP to decrease IN in less developing countries. Moreover, to increase the net base, the authorities need to bring IFS under the umbrella of regulation to avoid inequality in society. In developing economies, a higher part of labor force is related to IFS; therefore, our findings suggest a dire need to reduce labor exploitation in IFS. The policymakers can reduce labor exploitation by reducing the size of IFS, which ultimately reduces IN.Social implicationsOn the basis of the authors’ findings, this paper further suggests that it is mandatory for government to reduce CP in order to reduce IN. Moreover, to reduce IN, one needs to reduce the size of IFS.Originality/valueThis study is unique as it is the first that examined the role of IFS in establishing the effect of CP on IN for developing countries at different percentiles.

Objectives: Of all work settings, hospitals carry the greatest risk of workplace violence, with 73% of doctors suffering the abuse. The scenario in Pakistan is also not so bright. This increase in incidences of workplace violence is affecting significantly on work efficiency of doctors۔Thus this study was undertaken to know the exact prevalence of such incidences in teaching hospitals of Faisalabad city. Study Design: Community based cross-sectional study. Setting: Three government teaching hospitals of Faisalabad. Period: From January 2019 to February 2019. Material & Methods: All the doctors who were willing to be included in the study were interviewed to know their experiences about episodes of workplace violence (WPV) during last 12 months and about the post-violence effect on work efficiency. Results: The prevalence of workplace violence in the last 12 months was found to be 73%, whereas 97% of participants who experienced violence said that it had an impact on their work efficiency significantly. Workplace violence and post-violence effect on work efficiency were seen to be significantly more associated with younger doctors. Conclusions: Workplace violence is emerging as a bane to the medical profession and has to be dealt with urgently.