Journal of Quantitative Economics
Year:2009 | Volume:6 | Issue:2 (21)|Papers Count:14

In Iran’s 4th five-year economic development plan it has been assessed that the productivity contribution in economic growth to be 2.5 percent and it can be materialized through increases in efficiency. Therefore, this study seeks to answer this question whether industrial efficiency, as an engine of economic growth, has had any growth during the 4th five-year economic development plan of Iran. In this study the stochastic frontier production function is estimated to determine efficiency in Iran’s industry as a whole. For purposes of comparison, also, Iran’s industry is categorized into three different sizes of firms, and two different types of ownership. The results show that efficiency level is the highest for the small firms group at 68.1 percent and the lowest for large firms group at 52.5 percent. Average efficiency level was approximately constant for small firms, rising for medium sized firms and decreasing for large sized firms over the time period. The efficiency level is higher for the private firms group at 86.8 than for public firms group at 46.1 percent. The average efficiency level is rising for both private and public firms during the time period. The efficiency was 41 percent in 2009 for Iran’s industry as a whole and it has grown from 36 percent in 2003 to 45 percent in 2008. It shows efficiency has roughly increased 1.5 percent annually and also Iran’s industry is becoming more efficient and competitive. In spite of efficiency growth, the level of efficiency is still low at 41 percent. The results show that the industries are not competitive enough.

The aim of this paper is to assess the relation between exports instability investment and economic growth in Iran. The few previous studies have not attempted to utilize the dynamic methods of assessment and the time series techniques and ARCH models. In this study, we found that the variables are unstable in level; therefore, a distorted view on studies was conducted according to regressive formats alone without no concern to the unstable state of variation. Nevertheless, our results indicate that in the long-run export instability has a negative effect on investment and economic growth. However, in the short-run the effects are minimal.

The present paper investigated the impact of oil revenue on the inflation and growth rates of Iran in the period of pre-exchange rate reform of 1993. In doing so, dynamic equations for growth, inflation, the exchange rate, money and foreign inflation were estimated. The equations were then used to run a number of simulations of inflation and growth. As a result, it was found out that oil revenue only influences growth by a slow direct effect. Inflation is influenced by oil revenue through a direct effect, foreign prices, and the real exchange rate. The net effect is that greater oil revenue has tended to reduce inflation, though the effect has been greatest since the revolution. A large part of the volatility in inflation and growth appears to be due to the variation in oil revenue rather than boom in themselves.

In the decision system, policy makers decide based on an information system including statistical indexes. If information system would be based on shadow economy, the policy makers will not achieve to desired results, because information and results are subjected to estimate by error. This part of economy effects on important indexes such as income redistribution, employment, government income and finally social welfare. So study about this part of economy and how affecting other parts of economy from this will help government to control its effects. In this paper, we have tried to analyze the effect of shadow economy on the other parts especially labor market and tax system of a country via panel data for 17 developed countries of OECD between 1994-2008 and then presented the suggestions to simplify the control of this part. As a consequence, in the labor market, partnership rate has significant effect negatively and unemployment rate has significant positively on expanding the shadow economy and the regulation burden have also direct effect on this part of economy. About the tax, tax burden has significant effect positively on shadow economy growth and versus change in tax burden of these countries doesn’t have significant effect on this part of studied countries.

Concentration is regarded as one of the most important aspects of market structure and it helps us to consider market structure. It is usually used in empirical studies of market and industry structure to determine the degree of competition and monopoly. Also, it is possible to design appropriate program toward desired performance by studying time trend of concentration and recognition of effective factors on concentration variation. This study aims to investigate the effects of trade liberalization on industrial concentration in various levels of manufacturing industries (ISIC 4digits). for this purpose "Raw data comprehensive project of the industrial firms of Iran during 1994-2004" were used, Also, panel model with cross fixed effect was chosen for estimation, after doing stability test of Levin-Lin-Chu and specification tests of Chow, Brousch-Pagan and Hausman. The results show that trade liberalization has negative effect on industrial concentration and make the market structure more competitive. To investigate the effects of trade liberalization on industries with competitive and monopoly structure, two groups including low and high concentrated industries were considered. Results of this grouping show that the liberalization leads to a decrease in the level of concentration in the low concentrated group. Also, adjusted concentration index was used in order to investigate domestic market.

Considering the importance of poverty in economic development issues, it is tried to estimate poverty intensity and examine its trend via using an applied index called SST. This index belongs to the family of decomposable indices and shows the poverty intensity in terms of the product of its components: poverty rate, average poverty gap ratio of the poor and Gini index of poverty gap ratio of the population. This decomposition makes possible for the researcher to follow the source of changes in poverty intensity via changes in its components. The results reveal that the SST index has increased during both in urban and rural areas of the province. Also, the increase in the urban areas, is much more than the increase in rural areas.

In this study, we estimate a complete demand system for Iran that emphasizes main groups demand, using the CBS differential demand system specification. The results of this study, indicated that the expenditure elasticity of “Furniture and upholstery” and “Transportation and communication” groups are greater than one, and expenditure elasticity of “Housing group”; “Hygiene and medical care” and “Clothing and Footwear ” lesser than one. Also, the lowest compensated own-price elasticity and the lowest uncompensated own-price elasticity are found for Food and for “Clothing and Footwear”, respectively. From the compensated cross-price elasticities view point, some groups are Allen-Hicks complements, although the values of elasticities are small (For example Hygiene and medical care and Food).