Venue: Conference Hall, CDPR

Date:4th Aug 2017, Friday

Time: 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm

Consortium for Development Policy Research (CDPR) hosted its thirteenth Lahore Policy Exchange talk on “How Terrorism affects Pakistan’s Trade.” Pakistan’s economy has under-performed not just for policy reasons, but because of a security situation that increases costs for businesses and risk for investors. How does this security situation affect trade? International experience shows that terrorism can increase trading costs and influence the kind of goods countries choose to import and export. However, this plays out in different ways depending on the country. Furthermore, terrorism does not necessarily reduce trade as many might assume. This event explored research that maps the potential scenarios for how trade activity reacts to terrorism, and connect that insight with Pakistan’s situation. Speakers at the event were: Javed Younas (Associate Professor of Economics at American University of Sharjah) and Shahid Abdullah (Chief Executive Officer at Sapphire Fibres Ltd., a major garments exporter). Naved Hamid, Professor of Economics at the Lahore School of Economics, moderated the discussion. Policy exchange dialogue took place at the end, when the question and answer session took place amongst the audience and the presenters.