The Comparative Analysis of the Industrial Policy Impact on Export Performance in the Military and Democratic Regime of Pakistan

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Since independence, the economy has always suffered from the power struggle between democracy and autocracy, which significantly damaged the economy and gave birth to different economic issues, the export sector being one of the top most affected. Once titled among Asian Tigers, the country’s export overseas yields even to Bangladesh. The current study attempts to analyse the impact of industrial policy on export performance under democracy and autocracy. Many authors and past studies have argued that Pakistan lacks the long-term farsighted industrial policy. The paper considers the industrial policy instruments, import tariff, export subsidy, export rebate, R&D expenditures, industrial expenditures and export processing zone, while export sophistication, export diversification and export competitiveness are used as indicators of export performance from 1980 till 2018. The result of the study indicates that the democracy type of a regime promotes industrialization with expanding export base and competitiveness, while the autocratic type of a regime is helpful in producing sophisticated goods. The analysis is focused on the descriptive basis by comparing the changes and growth in democracy and autocracy, while the Error Correction Model has been applied to see the adjustment of shocks and structural changes. Export sophistication and export diversification show a significant convergent effect, while export competitiveness demonstrates a divergent relation with our independent variables. The findings suggest that it is of sheer necessary to have a long-term farsighted industrial policy under conditions of stability to attract more and more investment in the economy to sophisticate, diversify and promote competitiveness.