Suchergebnisse

More equal economic, social and political rights for women have long been part of civil and political right movements. It is widely believed that women's rights are important for greater economic prosperity, good governance and social equality. However, women are still being discriminated in many parts of the world. How women's rights can be protected? To answer this question, the literature has highlighted the importance of free media in promoting women's rights. The extant literature on media and women rights, however, is largely limited to descriptive analysis and theoretical arguments. Moreover, the available evidence is confined to few case studies and anecdotal stories, which cannot be generalized globally. This study contributes in the literature by empirically investigating the relationship of press freedom with women empowerment using a large panel of 160 countries from 1996 to 2011. For empirical analysis, the ordered logit method is used. The empirical finding confirms that press freedom is an effective tool to empower women's economic, political and social rights. Findings of the study are shown to be robust to different specifications, sub-samples, regional controls and different forms of women empowerment.
JEL Classifications Codes: C23, J16, Z10

More equal economic, social and political rights for women have long been part of civil and political right movements. It is widely believed that women's rights are important for greater economic prosperity, good governance and social equality. However, women are still being discriminated in many parts of the world. How women's rights can be protected? To answer this question, the literature has highlighted the importance of free media in promoting women's rights. The extant literature on media and women rights, however, is largely limited to descriptive analysis and theoretical arguments. Moreover, the available evidence is confined to few case studies and anecdotal stories, which cannot be generalized globally. This study contributes in the literature by empirically investigating the relationship of press freedom with women empowerment using a large panel of 160 countries from 1996 to 2011. For empirical analysis, the ordered logit method is used. The empirical finding confirms that press freedom is an effective tool to empower women's economic, political and social rights. Findings of the study are shown to be robust to different specifications, sub-samples, regional controls and different forms of women empowerment. JEL Classifications Codes: C23, J16, Z10

Does e-government promote trade and economic growth? This paper attempts to answer this question by employing simultaneous equation estimation approach and using a crosssection data of 147 countries. This is first study which has empirically estimated the bilateral relationships between economic growth and e-government, trade and e-government and trade and economic growth. The findings indicate that e-government is a stimulant of both economic growth and trade. The results predict the presence of a bilateral relationship between egovernment and economic growth, trade and e-government, and unilateral causality exists from trade to growth.

This paper investigates the impact of globalization on human trafficking using a large panel data set of 169 countries from 2001 to 2011. This study explores the contribution of economic, social and political globalization in the trafficking of humans for forced prostitution, forced labor, debt bondages and child soldiers. Moreover, the study investigates the impact of globalization on source (supply) and destination (demand) of human trafficking. This study uses Probit and Oprobit models of panel data for empirical analysis. Findings of the study show that globalization facilitates human trafficking, particularly, forced prostitution, forced labor and debt bondages while it helps to suppress the demand and supply of child soldiers. The empirical analysis also reveals that these are the mostly poor countries which serve as source of human trafficking while the rich countries are destination of trafficked victims. The data series over a long period are not available and therefore the sample size is small. This research paper contributes into the literature on human trafficking and globalization by highlighting the heterogeneity of source and destiny economies in shaping the links of globalization with human trafficking. To the best of our knowledge, it is first study of its kind that provides an empirical analysis of source and destiny of human trafficking with globalization. Moreover, this study considers different dimensions of globalization and human trafficking. The main message of this research is that as globalization proceeds, human trafficking increases. Therefore, the governments of developing economies need to improve socioeconomic conditions to provide basic necessities of life at home country and the governments of developed countries need to implement strong rule of the law to discourage such practices. Our study is useful in offering insights to policy makers that how to avoid the perils of globalization.