Export Incentives and Industrial Efficiency
Foreign exchange constraint, due to recurring balance of payments deficits, is a common feature of the developing countries. In order to boost the growth of their exports, particularly those of manufactured and non-traditional products, these countries have, from time to time resorted to various incentive schemes which have the effect of creating a dual exchange rate regime. The success or failure of these schemes has generally been judged in terms of improvement in export performance only. But these schemes have many indirect effects which have a bearing on industrial efficiency. Thus there can be situations where production may increase without regard to efficiency and exports may become profitable without being competitive. The expected long run beneficial effects of these schemes may tend to get partially or wholly negated. A prominent example of such a scheme is the export bonus scheme (EBS) of Pakistan which
The Operation of the Export Bonus Scheme in Pakistan's Jute and Cotton Industries
The author's intention is essentially to extend the Bruton and Bose study of the Pakistan Export Bonus Scheme [1], in terms of both time and commodity. However, in this paper we examine the operation of the scheme in jute and cotton industries only. In our next paper, which is now in process, we take up the other industries covered in [1] and also a few' more. Very briefly, the scheme works in the following wayt. The exporter of a "bonus commodity" surrenders his foreign exchange earnings to the State Bank of Pakistan and receives, in addition to the rupee equivalent, a voucher that entitles its owner to purchase foreign exchange equal in value to 20 or 30 per cent (depending on the commodity exported) of the amount earned. The voucher can be utilised for obtaining foreign exchange for use in a) importing a wide range of goods, b) business travels and c) opening and maintaining commercial offices abroad.
Strategy and Manipulation in Medieval Elections
There are many goals in developing electoral protocols, including a desire for a system which is transparent, in that it is clear what the rule or procedure to follow is; nonmanipulable, in that it is not in a person’s best interest to misrepresent their preferences; honest, in the sense that it elects the ‘right’ candidate; and not open to strategizing, i.e., bribery or collusion. However, these desiderata are in tension with each other: Often, transparent electoral procedures are the least strategy resistant, and many honest procedures encourage manipulation. Thus a balance between these different goals must be sought. In modern times, since the seminal result on vote manipulation, the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem [5, 6], much attention has been devoted to developing voting rules where manipulation is never in the best interest of the voters [4] or which are computationally too complex for the average bounded agent to be able to manipulate [1]. This focus on computational aspects of electoral methods is one of the hallmarks of modern studies on voting. But pursuit of these goals is not restricted to modern times: Those participating in elections in the Middle Ages also sought transparency, non-manipulability, honesty, and strategyproofness in so far as these properties can be consistently expressed in a single procedure. However, given the lack of computational sophistication in the Middle Ages, alternate approaches were needed in order to promote honesty, discourage strategizing, etc. These approaches can be classified as either external (constraints introduced outside of the electoral procedure, such as incentives for coming to consensus quickly) or internal (constraints introduced within the electoral procedure, such as voting rules which cannot be manipulated without adverse effects, or which are too difficult for the average bounded agent to manipulate). Surveying examples of both approaches in the context of medieval ecclesiastical and secular elections provides an interesting comparison to modern electoral procedures. Elections in the Middle Ages were used for the same reasons that they are today: To select suitable candidate(s) for a particular office, duty, or obligation. However, it is important to note that the term electio was used in the Middle Ages in a broader sense than our modern ‘election’. Its primary sense was ‘selection’ or ‘choice’, and only secondarily ‘election’ in the modern sense. Thus, many records which purportedly discuss elections are not discussing elections of the type which interests us. We can identify four categories of medieval electoral processes: (1) Election by an external authority having no direct interest in the election; (2) Indirect election, where electors name other electors who then select or elect the officials; (3) Election by lot; and (4) Election by ballot. Elections of the first and third types are generally computationally uninteresting; the first type corresponds to dictatorial voting rules, and the third type collapses to probability theory. In general, interesting voting methods are found only in the fourth type, election by ballot, though they can also occur in indirect election.