No abstract

This study has explored the welfare impact of Benazir Income Support Program’s (BISP) unconditional cash transfers on women empowerment. The program was initiated in 2011 by the government of Pakistan. The impact has been computed by using two follow up rounds i.e, 2011 & 2016 where baseline was carried out in 2011 and follow-up round was carried out in 2016. Regression Discontinuity Design approach was used to measure casual effects of the BISP cash transfers on women empowerment by selecting target and control groups based on proxy means test. The overtime impact have been estimated by employing Difference in Difference (DiD) model on panel households from 2011-2016. The study observed that BISP led to improve socio-economic wellbeing of the beneficiary women. It has brought improvement in women mobility and women participation in voting. The important contribution is an improvement in the aspect of socio-economic and political empowerment and women mobility across time and overtime. This showed continues support for longer period brought desired results.

Wheat is an important food crop of Pakistan and used in variety of ways to produce other by-products. Pakistan falls under top ten major countries of the world producing wheat. The objectives of the study are to investigate whether hasty changes in climate exerting impacts on wheat yield in Pakistan or not. The data spanning over a time period of 1991 to 2015 were used. The variables namely area under cultivation of wheat, water availability, amount of precipitation, mean temperature, and mean relative humidity are used for the purpose of estimation. The Auto Regressive Distributed Lag Model is applied for inference of results. The results of the study indicate that both in short and long run humidity rate, water usages, and area play a significant role in increasing the wheat yield whereas, precipitation shows the negative effect on wheat yield. Also, temperature does not show any significant impact in short run, while it plays a vital role in enhancing wheat yield in the long run.