The spread of coronavirus disease, 2019, has affected several countries in the world including Asian countries. The occurrences of COVID infections are uneven across countries and the same is determined by socioeconomic situations prevailing in the countries besides the preparedness and management. The paper is an attempt to empirically examine the socioeconomic determinants of the occurrence of COVID in Asian countries considering the data as of June 18, 2020, for 42 Asian countries. A multiple regression analysis in a cross‐sectional framework is specified and ordinary least square (OLS) technique with heteroscedasticity corrected robust standard error is employed to obtain regression coefficients. Explanatory variables that are highly collinear have been dropped from the analysis. The findings of the study show a positive significant association of per capita gross national income and net migration with the incidence of total COVID‐19 cases and daily new cases. The size of net migration emerged to be a potential factor and positive in determining the total and new cases of COVID. Social capital as measured by voters' turnout ratio (VTR) in order to indicate the people's participation is found to be significant and negative for daily new cases per million population. People's participation has played a very important role in checking the incidence of COVID cases and its spread. In alternate models, countries having high incidence of poverty are also having higher cases of COVID. Though the countries having higher percentage of aged populations are more prone to be affected by the spread of virus, but the sign of the coefficient of this variable for Asian country is not in the expected line. Previous year health expenditure and diabetic prevalence rate are not significant in the analysis. Therefore, people‐centric plan and making people more participatory and responsive in adhering to the social distancing norms in public and workplace and adopting preventive measures need to be focused on COVID management strategies. The countries having larger net migration and poverty ratio need to evolve comprehensive and inclusive strategies for testing, tracing, and massive awareness for sanitary practices, social distancing, and following government regulation for management of COVID‐19, besides appropriate food security measures and free provision of sanitary kits for vulnerable section.
While numerous studies have tried to analyze the impact of intergovernmental transfers in fostering fiscal equalization in India, there need to be more studies in the context of north‐eastern (NE) states. Situating in a geographically isolated and economically backward region, the states of NE India depend heavily on central fiscal transfers to meet expenditures and to promote various economic activities in the region. One of the essential objectives of these transfers is to achieve fiscal equity. Hence, the study attempts to analyze the fiscal equalizing nature of the intergovernmental transfers across NE India during 1991–2019. The coefficient of variation (CV) analysis results indicates that although fiscal transfers reduced the magnitude of disparity in the own‐source revenue across the NE states, a significant amount of disparity still exists in the resource base across these states. The regression analysis findings suggest that the transfers across these states need to be more fiscal equalizing. The per capita gross state domestic product emerges as a positive and significant in predicting per capita transfers, and hence it questions the progressivity of central transfers. When assigning the interstate share of transfers, more weight should be placed on fiscal equalizing factors such as per capita income. The Finance Commission of India should emphasize fiscal equalizing criteria when allocating weights and recommending transfers to the NE States. Additionally, states with low incomes should be recognized in plan schemes.
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