How to Choose A Topic

There are many different ways to choose a research topic. The best way is the following:

Real World Problem: Look at the world around you, and find an economic problem that interests you. Here is a list of problems recently chosen by M.Phil. students, all of which come from real world concerns:

• 1. Factors behind decline of milk production in Pakistan. Pakistan is one of the leading countries in the world in terms of milk production, but there some concern that milk production is declining. Is this true? If so, why?

  2. Welfare impact of rising food prices in Pakistan. Food prices have risen sharply all over the world in the recent past. What is the impact of this on the lives of the poor in Pakistan?

     1. 1. Efficiency of response to Earthquake. A lot of money and aid flowed into Pakistan following the Earthquake. Was it handled in an efficient way? Can we learn something about the patterns of utilization?

        2. Impact of Power Shortages on Industrial Production. This topic is self explanatory.

        3. WTO and Cotton Exports of Pakistan. Changes in rules and regulation regarding cotton exports have occurred recently. How have they impacted on our cotton exports.

        4. Assessing Privatization of PTCL, HBL, KESC etc. A lot of privatizations have occurred recently. How is the post-privatization performance of ? Has this been a useful exercise or has it been bad for Pakistan?

        5. Social Accounting for NGO’s. A lot of NGO’s are operating in Pakistan. Is this good for us or bad? Conventional accounting rules look only at profit loss and therefore cannot be used to evaluate NGO’s. Operations of NGO’s are often in social spheres with no direct & immediate profit loss calculations possible. How can we evaluate the social impact of NGO’s to assess their value?

        6. Language of Education: A cost benefit analysis of whether or not English is good to use as the general medium of instruction in Pakistan. One the one hand, it provides access to jobs. On the other hand, huge numbers of children fail to understand basic lessons and are reduced to rote memorization because of inadequate language skills.

• • 2. If we look at the world around us, there is no shortage of real problems for which research is needed to find solutions. Students have a mindset that we are not ready for real problems yet, and want to find simple imitative and meaningless research as way to fulfill degree requirements. This needs to be changed; we should give students confidence that they can tackle and solve real world problems. Here is a step-by-step guide to preparing a proposal for M.Phil research:

    4. Step 1: Choosing a Research Problem.

    6. How to select a problem from among the huge number of possibilities? I suggest that you visit places where work is done on economic problems, and talk to people who are working on solving them. There are various government ministries dealing with different types of economic problems. They often hire consultants and ask for research reports on different types of problems. There are also organizations like World Bank, IMF, ILO, other UN institutions, as well as many research organization in the private sector, and consultants. Talk to people about economic problems they are solving. Find a problem that interests you.

    7. There are two Islamic procedures for decision making: Istikhara and Mashwera. Use both of these in selecting a research problem. Having chosen a tentative research problem, discuss it with those who have some knowledge about the subject matter. Find out about the literature, and about data sources, relevant to the research topic.