Economic growth is currently an essential phenomenon for emerging countries worldwide and has gained the researchers' intentions. Thus, the current study aims to examine the role of foreign direct investment (FDI), capital formation, inflation, money supply, and trade openness on the economic growth of Asian countries. The data has been extracted from the twenty emerging Asian countries from 2007 to 2018 using the most popular database named World Development Indicators (WDI). The fixed-effects model, along with the robust standard error, has been used for checking the impact of predictors on the economic growth of Asian countries. The results revealed that the predictors such as FDI, capital formation, money supply, and trade openness have positive association with economic growth, while inflation has a negative association with the economic growth of Asian countries. These findings are suitable for the new arrivals who want to examine this area in the future and for the regular traders who want to develop policies related to economic growth.

Health has a major contribution in attaining better human capital and wellbeing both at the individual as well as at country levels. Although military spending may boost economic growth through multiplier and spillover effects, yet tradeoffs exist between military expenditures and health outcomes. Grossman (1972) explains health as output which depends on many input variables. By covering a panel of 156 countries ranging from the time period 1970 to 2014, this study incorporates military expenditures, GDP per capita, urbanization, access to the improved drinking water source, number of physicians, and secondary school enrollment as determinants of health (life expectancy and infant mortality). OLS, fixed effects, random effects, and system GMM have been used as estimation techniques. The study reveals that countries with low military expenditures have a comparatively high life expectancy and low infant mortality as compared to countries with high military expenditures. Robustness of results was checked through sensitivity analyses performed on the bases of determinants of health, international geopolitical scenario, and the development status of the country. The evidence of sensitivity analysis suggests that overall results are robust in life expectancy model but somehow sensitive in case of infant mortality. The study affirms the explicit tradeoff between military expenditures and welfare spending and concludes that hefty defense expenditures lower life expectancy and enhance infant mortality.

This study empirically examines the performance and obstacles of SMEs in BRICS economies. For empirical evaluation, Ordinary Least Square technique has applied by taking the time period between “2000-2017”. Performance has taken as dependent variable and obstacles; firm characteristics and global factor have taken as explanatory variables. Estimated results show that ownership and size have a positive impact on SMEs growth and performance. Age has a negative and significant impact on the performance and growth of SMEs. Technology has a positive and significant impact on the performance of SMEs. Obstacles i.e. courts, crime, access to finance, practices of competitors and electricity has a negative and significant impact on the performance of SMEs. Access to land, infrastructure and workforce has a positive and significant impact on SMEs performance.  It becomes very important for the policymakers or investigators to pay attention towards making SMEs more competent, capable and productive in order to attain the goal of sustainable development and progress.

Foreign direct investment plays a vital role in promoting economic growth, especially for developing economies. It causes improvement in the different sectors such as education, healthcare, manufacturing industries, and creates more jobs. The speed of FDI inflows has been increasing in Pakistan each year. In order to attract more FDI, many countries try to reframe their tax policies by introducing different tax incentives such as tax holidays, investment allowances, exemptions, deductions etc. The purpose of the present paper is to find the implication of taxation in the decision of FDI inflows in Pakistan. Time series data is used spanning over 1985 to 2020. The data was obtained from two sources: the “World Development Indicator” (WDI) and “Economic Survey of Pakistan”. “Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag” (ARDL) and “Error Correction Model” (ECM) techniques are used for empirical analysis. The study concludes that low taxes motivate foreign investors' investment contribution and the long-run relationship between taxes and FDI in Pakistan. Other control variables, including GDP growth, trade openness and exchange rate, positively impact FDI. It is suggested that decision-makers should direct policies to reduce the taxes to welcome FDI in Pakistan. In this regard, the government needs to reconsider its priorities while making policies favouring FDI.

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