Gender inequality is a big issue in Asia. The objective of this study is to explain empirically how gender inequality affects the human enlargement index in Asian countries based on the panel data from 1990-2018. We utilized panel data Fixed Effect regression in this study to quantify the impacts of gender inequality on human development across Asian countries. The selection of the Fixed Effects Model has been made after the Hausman test results. The results of the study expose that gender inequality significantly contributed to both the human development index and the non-income human development index but their relationship is negative. As for as the control variables are concerned, working population and trade openness positively contributed towards human development while inflation and unemployment negatively contributed towards human development in Asia.

It is an empirical exercise to build the connection between investment in human/ physical capital and economic growth. A panel data set is targeted by considering twelve selected SAARC and ASEAN economies for the period 2005-2019. To get the empirical findings a unit root analysis is made for data stationarity; the Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) method is taken in practice to find the association of the investment in human/physical capital with economic growth. Moreover, the Pedroni test is used to examine cointegration among the regressors as well as explained variables. The research outcomes highlight that the investment in the human and physical capital formation through education/health expenditures and gross fixed capital formation plays a noteworthy part in economic growth in SAARC and ASEAN economies separately and overall. Moreover, the inflationary trends and the labor force participation rate have their significance for determining economic growth. The trade volume is a significant force for the economic growth until the export proportion will be greater than imports. In a policy outlook, there is a need to enhance the fiscal budget for the health and education sector that will ultimately enhance the economic growth of the concerned economies.

The capital markets are highly interconnected in the modern economic system, and it is one of the most vulnerable sectors to any financial and natural disaster occurring around the globe. The COVID-19 pandemic not only affects the capital market of the host nation but also creates problems in other parts of the world’s capital markets as well. The main objective of this event study is to empirically analyze the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the daily stock market returns in Pakistan, which is a fast-growing and emerging market in South Asia. For this, we used secondary data to evaluate the effects of COVID-19 in different dimensions i.e., total cases, new cases, total deaths, new deaths, and the positive rate on the daily stock returns of 531 listed companies in the Pakistan stock exchange over the period of March 2020 to November 2021. For stationarity of the variables, we applied an augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) unit root test. The results of the study obtained through ARCH family regression estimation revealed that the total number of cases, new cases, and the positive rate are negatively affecting the stock market returns in Pakistan while the total deaths and new deaths are positively affecting the stock market returns during the pandemic.