ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the security of property rights in relation to the growth boom and bust experienced by Pakistan between 2003 and 2013. It outlines the key characteristics of the economic boom in Pakistan after 2003. It explores four hypotheses, namely the security of property rights, liberalisation, macroeconomic policy and the global economy, to explain the boom bit of the boom-bust cycle in Pakistan after 2003. The chapter further argues that positive impulses from the world economy were channelled briefly into rapid investment-export led growth in Pakistan due to a strong government which was able to improve the perceived protection of property rights for investors and ensure more profits and wealth went into higher productive investment, rather than capital flight. The characteristics of the boom were similar in India, with all the same features of benign and sustainable growth, rising investment, declining government and international debt, a shift to a balance of payments surplus and low inflation.
