Lahore School of Economics Ninteenth Annual Conferene on Management of Pakistan Economy
April 27, 2026
8-9 April 2026
Moazam Mahmood, Azam Chaudhry, and Matthew McCartney
Themes of external vulnerability, energy dependence, and growth dominated the two-day conference at the Lahore School of Economics. The conference occurred against the backdrop of an ongoing programme with the IMF and oil prices rising to $120 a barrel, at a time when Pakistan imports 80% of its energy needs.
The opening address was given by the Rector Dr. Shahid Amjad Chaudhry, who framed the conference in terms of three vulnerabilities faced by Pakistan, ongoing negotiations with the IMF from a position of weakness owing to recurrent and accumulated foreign debt, the shock to domestic costs and the import bill resulting from increased oil prices, and a longer-term reform agenda related to regulation, taxation, and investment.
The first panel on day one chaired by Dr. Ishrat Hussain former Governor of the the State Bank, focused on External Vulnerabilities and Growth.
The Modeling Lab at the Lahore School, Dr. Moazam Mahmood, Dr. Azam Chaudhry, Amna Noor Fatima, Anoosha Liaqat, and Syeda Khadijah Batool, estimated that pre conflict GDP growth for FY 2025-2026 could have been 3.2%, but the oil price shock would lower it to 1.8%. Inflation was forecast to reach 9.4%. The exchange rate after the precipititous depreciations of 2018 and 2022, remained remarkably resilient, despite pressure from an oil shocked deficit in the Current Account.
Dr Rashid Amjad the Director of the Graduate Institute for Development Studies at the Lahore School, argued that the surge in remittance income to Pakistan to $40 billion in 2025, while gratifying support on the Current Account, risked being spent more on imports, with a lower impact on the domestic economy.
Dean of Economics, Dr Azam Chadhry and Gul Andaman estimated that the GDP growth rate consistent with a sustainable balance of payments had shrunk over recent decades to 3.7%. The faster economic growth needed to reduce poverty and create employment could risk sucking in excessive imports and leading to another debt crisis.
Dr. Naved Hamid the Director for the Centre for Research in Economics and Business at the Lahore School, and Murtaza Syed from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, explored a narrative of policy failure, the unwinding of trade liberalisation in the 2000s towards greater protection and increased complexity of the trade regime.
Dr. Rajah Rasiah Dean at the University of Malaya argued that a proactive industrial policy could help Pakistan pursue a goal of export-led industrialisation, building on existing successes in solar technology.
The second session examined structural change in Pakistan.
Dr. Ishrat Hussain catalogued a growing litany of economic failures in large-scale manufacturing, declining capabilities, the continued dominance of low-value-added textile exports for three decades, and a declining share of global export markets.
Dr. Kalim Hyder from the State Bank of Pakistan and Mehak Ejaz from the Institute of Business Management, traced the slowdown in manufacturing growth to declining investment, in turn driven by the high cost of domestic loan capital.
Dr. Rabia Ikram and Amna Kashif from the Lahore School used rigorous statistical analysis to show a step down in trend GDP growth, from 4% over 1992-2018, to 2.5% from 2018-2023. Again, the authors highlighted the crucial role of declining investment.
Shamyla Chaudry, Muzzna Maqsood, and Dr. Moazam Mahmood from the Lahore School, estimated that low savings in Pakistan, (and therefore low investment), was contributed to by mounting capital outflows of $6 billion to $9 billion per year. Arguing that depreciation of the exchange rate triggered these outflows because of declining relative domestic profitability.
Finally, Anum Ellahi from the Lahore School, completed the sectoral overview showing that falling sectoral growth had even spread to the agricultural sector, where both food crops (wheat) and industrial inputs (cotton) had experienced sharp falls in annual growth rates over the two years, possibly correlated to falling support prices.
The first panel on day two focused on regulatory policy and welfare.
Dr. Theresa Thompson Chaudhry Co Chair of the Innovation and Technology Centre at the Lahore School, collected data from 657 manufacturing firms in the Punjab using a Randomised Control Trial (RCT). The study showed that firms drastically undervalued potential cost savings from using solar technology – payback periods of under two years and potential savings in electricity use of 40-60 per cent. This information failure creates the potential to drastically scale up the number of firms that had installed solar technology by 2024 to 13 per cent. The study also found that firms' pessimistic attitudes were hard to shift.
Dr. Matthew McCartney from the ZRCP in Zanzibar, explored the political economy of economic reform and showed that stable, durable governments in Pakistan were better incentivised to provide poverty-reducing public goods and to conduct growth-promoting macroeconomic management.
The Modelling Lab at the Lahore School showed a disturbing recent trend in caloric poverty in Pakistan, which had consistently declined declined between 2000 and 2014, plateaued to 2018, but then reversed, increasing through to 2025.
Dr. Waqar Wadho from the Lahore School, examined the labour market in Pakistan, showing the low impact of rising education and skills, on the low productivity informal economy, seen in women’s low levels of labour force participation, and high unemployment levels even among degree holders.
Dr. Rabia Ariff and Dr. Azam Chaudhry from the Lahore School, explored Pakistan's positioning in global value chains (GVCs). They found that limited local value added, and short local GVCs, could be improved through higher labour productivity and institutions to deepen integration.
Dr. Mujtaba Piracha from the Government of Pakistan, and Nadia Mukhtar from LUMS, examined Pakistan's Export Development Fund (EDF) as a case study of export-oriented industrial policy. The paper showed why industrial policy is crucial for Pakistan – addressing market failures, the complexity of industrial policy – the different needs of large and small firms, and the importance of financing constraints for firms that could enter export markets.
Dr. Jamshed Uppal from the Catholic University of America, noted the importance of financial inclusion for empowerment and poverty reduction, but estimated that it will be another 52 years before 90% of Pakistan's population even has access to a bank account.
Finally, Dr. Matthew McCartney gave the Rapporteurs' Report, highlighting the themes of vulnerability and resilience of Pakistan, the impressive 19-year history of the Lahore School’s Economics Conference, and the importance of transformative changes such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Urbanisation, and Climate Change as suitable subjects for future conferences to engage with.
Dr Shahid Chaudhry gave the final vote of thanks to staff, students, and visitors to the conference.
In summary, a forest-not-the-trees analysis of the conference papers is disturbing. It shows that there was looming crisis of GDP growth, sectoral growth, and resulting welfare loss, prior to the current oil shock. From 2018 onwards, trend GDP growth falls to 2.5%, based on a trend drop in investment. The large depreciations from 2018 seem to have triggered a significant increase in capital outflows, on account of reduced relative domestic profitability, depleting domestic savings. Sectorally, the larger drop in investment has been in manufacturing. But with a policy warning also for agriculture.
This large depreciations from 2018 onwards fuelling inflation, and the fall in trend GDP growth, have reversed the ten decade long declining trend in poverty.
The good news is that the trigger for these declining macro trends, the falling exchange from 2018 onwards, appears to have stabilized. For which credit must go to GOP for getting it right. The worry is contra calls for further depreciation by various economic lobbies.
Labels: Economics, Management of Pakistan Economy, Pakistan Economy
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 4/27/2026 11:13:00 AM,
Admissions in the MS/M.PHIL Economics Program 2026
March 03, 2026
Choice between MS & MPhil with 4 specializations:
- Quantitative Economics
- Development Economics
- Trade & Public Policy
- Data Analytics
Generous Financial Support:
- Fully funded (no fees).
- Merit/need-based stipend (Rs. 35,000/M).
- TA jobs during thesis writing.
Admissions requirements:
- BS Economics (Min 3.0 CGPA)
- HAT (Social Sciences)
- Lahore School subject test
- Interviews by a panel
Deadline: 31st May.
Details here
Labels: Admission, Economics, Fully Funded, Lahore School, Mphil, MS
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 3/03/2026 03:16:00 PM,
Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences - 2025
October 14, 2025
University leaders, faculty colleagues, and former students shared reflections on Nobel Prize winner Peter Howitt’s contributions to the field of economics and to the Brown community. Dr Azam Chaudhry, Brown Class of 2002 (Ph.D.) Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Pro-Rector at the Lahore School of Economics reminisces:
“While many people know Peter as a pioneering researcher — and now a Nobel Prize winner — I was one of the fortunate people who also knew him as a Ph.D. supervisor. I still remember the day that he arrived in the economics department at Brown, and I went to introduce myself and ask if he needed any help moving in. He mentioned that he needed help finding a new chair, and I wandered around the department looking for one, secretly hoping that I would get to work with him. I was one of the fortunate ones who did and recall how he was incredibly generous, supportive, and patient with all of us budding economists. This is as much a part of his legacy as his Nobel Prize."
Labels: Economics, Nobel Prize
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 10/14/2025 11:53:00 AM,
State of the Pakistan Economy, Growth, And Inflation, Pending the Budget, FY 2024-2025
June 16, 2025
Labels: Economics, Pakistan Economy
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 6/16/2025 09:10:00 AM,
Dashed hopes
With the real economy in a deep slump and macroeconomic indicators stable, how should we describe the current state of the economy and the direction in which we are heading?
According to the just released Pakistan Economic Survey 2024-25, whatever spin you may want to give it, the economy is in a deep downturn given the collapse of the crop sector and the drastic decline in incomes in rural areas, where almost 60 per cent of the population lives and where extreme poverty is concentrated.
Read more »Labels: Budget, Economics, Pakistan Economy, Publications
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 6/16/2025 09:07:00 AM,
Strengthening Pakistan's Economy: Key Challenges and Solutions
April 30, 2025
Labels: Economics, Management of Pakistan Economy, Pakistan Economy
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 4/30/2025 05:46:00 PM,
Lahore School of Economics Annual Conference on Management of Pakistan Economy
April 23, 2025
The two-day conference is structured around two broad themes, those of economic growth and trade. Economic growth has revived to 2.5% in 2025 against stagnation across the previous two years. Pakistan has long imported more than it exports, requiring continued reliance on the vagaries of incoming worker remittances and frequent recourse to IMF lending. The conference occurs against a backdrop of an economic slowdown, debt crisis, and a three-year economic stabilization program recently agreed with the IMF.
Labels: Economics, Management of Pakistan Economy, Pakistan Economy
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 4/23/2025 11:55:00 AM,
State of economy
March 18, 2025
Dr. Rashid Amjad
The government’s response is that these improvements will happen, but first the severe macroeconomic imbalances they had inherited had to be corrected. They believe that having done this they deserve applause: inflation is now below three per cent, while it had reached near 30pc just two years earlier; the dreaded current account deficit, responsible for recurring boom-bust cycles, is in surplus; the threat of default that loomed in July 2023 has considerably faded and the tax-to-GDP ratio, crucial for funding development, is showing signs of a positive trend.
Labels: Economics, IMF, Pakistan Economy
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 3/18/2025 08:58:00 AM,
Economic Growth
December 04, 2024
These are all positive developments. But will this trend continue? Most importantly, if it does will it ignite sustained high growth, or as is the case with many developing countries, will it end up in the low-growth equilibrium trap of macro stability without growth?
Read more »Labels: Economics, Pakistan Economy, Publications
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 12/04/2024 09:45:00 AM,
Lahore School of Economics Annual Conference on Management of Pakistan Economy - Day 1
May 04, 2023
Labels: Economics, Management of Pakistan Economy, Pakistan Economy
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 5/04/2023 09:01:00 AM,
Lahore School Annual Conference on Managing Pakistan's Economy - Day 2
May 03, 2023
Labels: Economics, Management of Pakistan Economy, Pakistan Economy
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 5/03/2023 05:05:00 PM,
Lahore School of Economics Conference on Management of Pakistan Economy
March 28, 2019
Labels: Economics, Management of Pakistan Economy, Pakistan Economy
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 3/28/2019 03:42:00 PM,
Lahore School Dean of Faculty of Economics Presents at International Conference hosted by the Federal Bureau of Revenue
February 21, 2019
Labels: Economics, Management of Pakistan Economy, Pakistan Economy
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 2/21/2019 01:43:00 PM,
Management of Pakistan Economy
November 27, 2018
Labels: Economics, Management of Pakistan Economy, Pakistan Economy
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 11/27/2018 11:09:00 AM,
Mphil in Economics
March 22, 2016
Boston University, Duke University, Fordham University, University of Warwick (with full scholarship), University of Sheffield, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, University of Kent, etc.
Labels: Economics, Lahore School, Mphil, Programs
posted by S A J Shirazi @ 3/22/2016 03:30:00 PM,
City Campus
104 - C, Gulberg III,
Lahore, Pakistan.
Phones: 92-42-35714936, 38474385
Fax: 92-42-36560905
Main Campus
Intersection Main Boulevard Phase VI
Burki Road
Lahore, Pakistan.
Phones: 37254099, 37254311
