Journal of Economic Research
Year:2010 | Volume:45 | Issue:91|Papers Count:10

During recent years, a debate has been taking place on the relationship between economic growth and trade policies. The present article explores the impact of trade liberalization on economic growth in Islamic countries. We chose a sample of 26 Islamic countries and using the GMM method, estimated the correlation between trade liberalization and economic growth for the period 1990-2003. The empirical results of our study indicate that trade liberalizationhas positively affected economic growth. All the variables covered are statistically significant. The findings confirm that the growth rate of gross capital formation, literacy rate and total magnitude of trade have positive effect and the population growth rate has a negative effect on economic growth. From the above, we can conclude that all Muslim countries would gain in terms of economic growth by joining WTO and liberalizing their trade regimes, to take advantage of an increasingly globalized World.

Sharp increase in oil price and the volatility in recent decades have attracted most researchers towards the field of energy. It seems not only the direct oil price, but also the uncertainty caused by the oil price volatility affect the raw oil supp ly. In this research the effect of oil price volatility on oil supply has been estimated using monthly time series data from January 1980 to September 2007 for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Nigeria, and the monthly data from March 1981 to September 2007 for UK. Fist, applying GARCH the uncertainty from real oil price volatility is estimated, and then the long run coefficients are obtained using ARDL. The results indicate that the effect has been positive and significant in Saudi Arabia and Libya, but negative and significant in UK, while it was insignificant in Iran and Nigeria. This shows that the effect of oil price uncertainty on the oil supply depends on the shape of the utility function.

This paper examines the Lewis theory of structural change in Iran in the period 1974-2005. Where labor productivity growth and the intensive use of labor occurs via reallocation of labor between sectors or spillovers in the production from the manufacturing or service sectors to agriculture resulting to convergence. Assessing whether productivity gap is reducing or increasing, takes us to the notion of convergences. Aggregate productivity growth can occur within sectors or result from sectoral employment reallocation. Their relative importance can be fairly easily assessed by decomposing growth using a shift-share analysis. In this study, first the importance of sectoral reallocations is measured by a shift-share analysis, and then convergence in sectoral productivity level is measured by Theil index. The results support the process of convergence in the sectoral labor productivity in Iran on the period under consideration. However, sectoral convergence may take a long time to occur.

The convergence hypothesis maintains that an economy whose productivity lags behind other economies has a potential to grow faster. In other words, this economy can experience faster economic growth through absorbing, accepting, and using available technology experience. In this study, we have examined the relationship between TFP of industry sectors and regional convergence in Iran's provinces during the time-period 1369-1381. We have measured TFP by using Divisia index. Then, have examined TFP convergence hypothesis by using the Bernard-Jones catch-up model and panel data approach. The empirical analysis shows that all industries have experienced convergence across Iran's provinces in this time-period. We find evidence of conditional convergence in all industries except for wood industry - which shows evidence of. Absolute convergence In addition, by using TFP standard deviation we find no evidence for sigma convergence.

About 60 percent of the world's known reserves of oil reside in the Middle East region. As such, any developments of this region are of utmost importance for the world economy. The Strait of Hormuz is the export conduit for 90 percent of the oil of the countries bordering the Persian Gulf, supplying 40 percent of world oil consumption, and is controlled by our country. Since assessment of the sensitivity of world economy to oil, specifically, in this region, is very critical for our country, we have tried to determine the price and income elasticity through a study of world demand for the oil exported from the Strait of Hormuz.Price rise can cause higher income for exporting countries in the short-term period. However, in the long run, it causes a substantial decrease in the demand and subsequently in the income of exporting countries. The world demand for the oil exported from the Strait of Hormuz is inelastic. Moreover, the trend for substitution of renewable energies for oil is slow, but ever-increasing. Finally, the significant and influential conclusion is the substantial impact of the gross domestic product of developed countries on the demand for oil.

Monetary and fiscal policies are channels that government through them affects the macroeconomic variables, such as production, employment, investment, consumption, export, import and general price level to promote economic development and economic growth.In this study by using the macroeconomic model and system dynamic methods, we try to analyze the effect of government consumption and investment expenditure on the economic growth and macroeconomic variables. There are four sectors that constitute the structure of the model, namely: Production, Monetary, Government and Foreign Trade sectors. Each sector plays special role in the model and affects the economic growth directly or indirectly. Each sector contains several subsystems that interact with each other. The economic theories are basis for specifying structural equations. The equations are estimated by ARDL method. The model contains two types of long run equations and dynamic short run equations. All variables are simulated in the model, for 10 years from 1375 to 1385. Then validity of the model is evaluated by the statistical criteria. Simulation results show that an increase in government investment spending has more effect on GDP growth, than government consumption, during the simulation period. When government deficit is financed through borrowing from central bank, it still has less effect on economic growth, during the simulation period.

Investing in stock markets usually is involved in more risks than the bounds and bank deposits. It is expected that resulting returns (capital gain plus yields) from trading in a stock market to be more than those of in a risk free investment. Therefore, developing accurate techniques of estimation and forecasting in volatility analysis of financial markets is inevitable. Sum squares of weekly returns provide an unbiased measure for realized volatility. In this paper, returns are modeled by an ARIMA process, and volatility is modeled by ARIMA_XRL, ARMA-SCRL, GARCH, GARCH_C and a Risk_Metric processes. The main propose of present research is the estimation and forecasting of volatility in the weekly returns of Tehran Cement Company' share during 1381/01/03 to 1385/07/26. Our models consist of Leverage Effects, Lagged Returns Effects, and also Structural Breaks. Our findings confirm, among all the techniques, that the accuracy of ARIMA-SCRL process in volatility modeling is considerable. Furthermore it was resulted that, bad and good news are of symmetric leverage effects on the return of Tehran cement share price.

In this article, we briefly analyse cognitive science and cognitive economics. Generally, there are two main theories related to cognitive science and brain performance models. First theory which are inspired by computer and Artificial Intelligence and second the connectionist models. The connectionist theory is the most prevalent in cognitive science now. Hayek and North, the two Nobel laureates, by using Conceptions such as culture, Beliefs and Institutions tried to establish connectin between brain, cognition and Economic Performance in line with the connectionist models. Although Hayek and North models developed innovative points but they have some defaults. Perhaps These theories can be improved by synthesizing the Discursive Institutionalism and discourse theory.

During the last two decades, decentralization has been supposed as a tool for making the public sector policies more efficient. Despite the claimed benefits, there are some costs; some of decentralization theorists believe that devolution of pure public goods provision to local governments has led to the failure of decentralization policies.This article uses game theory to study the implications of decentralization policies for public goods from the efficiency point of view. The study findings which are based on a mathematical language and the game theory, reveal the fact that devolution of pure public goods provision to local governments violates Pareto efficiency measure.

Tourism industry has been the fastest and the most income-generating industry in the first decade of the third millennium. It has been for many countries including some of arc member countries a source of foreign exchange and contributed into their development. In this paper, we try to test empirically whether tourism expansion has had any significant effect on economic growth of arc member countries or not. Applying econometrics technique of Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) on static and dynamic panel data for the period of 1990-2007, we try to estimate the fixed and random effects of tourism on economic growth. Our empirical findings show that there is a strong relationship between tourism expenditures in arc member countries and their per capita GDP.