Market liberalization grew Pakistan’s economy yet worsened regional income shares.

Evidence

It is too readily assumed,” he added, “that development planning means encouragement of [the] public sector and imposition of a variety of bureaucratic controls to regulate economic activity, particularly in the private sector.” When Pakistan decided to abandon the policy and to liberalize the economy (ending import and price controls), it seemed clear to Haq “that the replacement of direct controls by appropriate price signals and incentives” was a key factor in the following economic success of the country. While he mostly agreed with the market-driven reforms the country implemented, he nonetheless remarked that the growth generated did not trickle down. “The free play of market mechanism[s],” he noted, “naturally favored the richer regions as well as the richer income groups within these regions.” — Anton Jäger and Daniel Zamora Vargas, Welfare for Markets, 330