Journal of Economic Research
Year:2019 | Volume:54 | Issue:1 |Papers Count:13

Competitiveness is one of the main and important issues in the economy which is considered as a tool for optimal growth and sustainable development. In present research Competitiveness of Iranian Industries listed in Tehran stock exchange which have had more than two firms during the period of 2007 to 2016 was studied. To study the competitiveness, mobility of productivity score and normalized market share have been applied with two methods: salter curve and mobility indices obtained from the Markov chain. First method is a Qualitative method and the latter is a quantitative one. The result showed that technological mobility is more than Economic mobility in studied industries. The results of mobility indices obtained from the Markov chain also showed that Computer and real property industries have higher Technological mobility Compared to other industries. Also economic mobility is higher in Transportation industry Compared to others.

This paper is analyzing the main factor that drives behavior of energy intensity in some countries during 2000-2015 by using decomposition approach and concentrating on Institutional and Economic Infrastructures. A sample of countries including UK, Germany, Japan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China and Russia is selected and classified in three classes; the first class countries have high level of economic openness and institutional quality. The second class has the middle levels of economic openness and institutional quality. The third class have a low level of economic openness and institutional quality. The findings show that countries with high levels of economic openness and institutional quality mainly have a low level of energy intensity. Also, the results of energy intensity decomposition by Fischer Ideal Index indicate that in the first class countries (UK, Germany and Japan) the main factor driving the changes in energy intensity, is efficiency improvement. By contrast, the second class (Turkey, Saudi Arabia) and the third class (Iran, China and Russia) have a different behavior of energy intensity: In Turkey, improvement of energy efficiency is dominant factor for driving energy intensity, but in Saudi Arabia, the structural changes by type of energy-intensive activities deactivate the efficiency effect. Moreover, in Iran and Russia, the main driver of energy intensity is the existence of inefficiency. while in China that is experienced a declining trend in energy intensity, the improving of efficiency is dominant effect.

Over the years of central planning in Iran, export diversification has always been at the forefront of governments’ objectives before and after the revolution. At the same time, many economists, especially neoclassical economists, has questioned the role of the State in bringing about export diversification and in particular carrying out selective targeting policies. Economic complexity, a theory put forward in recent years by Harvard and MIT economists, emphasizes the need to simultaneously take account of existing comparative advantage as well as the need to enhance economic complexity. In this paper, Iran’ s export dynamisms has been studied for the first time over the period of 1997-2015 using economic complexity theory. The results show the decline of the share of complex products with a high degree of diversification in Iran’ s export basket since 2005. Moreover, our research demonstrates that the main drivers of Iran’ s export basket include the degree of export penetration in existing export markets, growth of world demand, currency devaluation and the degree of penetration into the product space.

The substantial fall of the Iranian stock market in January2014 has been one of the most important economic events occurred in Iran during recent years. In this study, we applied the Log-Periodic Power-Law (LPPL) model to detect the development of bubble in Tehran Stock Exchange Index before the dramatic decline of 2014. Over the last decade, the LPPL model has been used to describe the endogenous price dynamics during an endogenous bubble regime and to predict the most probable time for the end of the bubble or the regime switching. Application of this model not only confirms the presence of a bubble in the stock market of Tehran, but also dose predict crash or change of regime has accrued in the early days of January 2014 with high accuracy.

The main objective of this study is to investigate the non-linear impacts of volatility of oil revenue on the relationship between exchange rate and trade balance of Iran. For this purpose, using annual time series over the period 1973 to 2016, volatility of oil revenue as the most important prevailing features of Iran economy has been quantified using EGARCH approach. After that the effect on the relationship between exchange rate and trade balance has been estimated applying Markov-Switching technique. The empirical findings indicate that trade balance follow triple trade regimes (high, medium and low trade deficit). volatility of oil revenue in 2 regimes (low and high trade deficit) have negative and significant impact on the relationship between exchange rate and trade balance. So that volatility of oil revenue has caused to debilitation of exchange rate effect on the trade balance.

In this paper, we investigate the relationship of the firms’ performance and their export status: 1) How are exporting firms different from home producers? 2) How does the performance of a firm evolve before starting to export? 3) After starting to export, how does the performance of a firm change? Using Iranian manufacturing plant level data, we find that Iranian exporters perform much better than non-exporters; on average they perform significantly better in sales by 34%, in value-added by 28%, in employment by 37%, in TFP by 25%, in labor productivity by 26% and in energy productivity by 24%. Iranian exporters grow faster in these measures than non-exporters before starting to export. But after starting to export, the size measures are still better than non-exporters while the growth measures are not significantly different from others. Finally, the exiters have severe significant decline in both level and growth measures.

The exchange rate as one of the channels of national economy connection to the international environment is one of the most important economic variables. The deviation of this variable from its equilibrium level is observed in almost most countries. But this phenomenon is very evident as a chronic phenomenon in developing countries, including Iran. In this study the investigation of this issue in Iran with emphasis on the real exchange rate in the post revolution period is on the agenda. To do that, in a systematic approach, we considered the Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) Model to simulate the real exchange rate behavior during the period of 1981-2015, and to calculate the amount of diversion and its nature. The results imply that, given the wide range of policies adopted in the market, the real exchange rate has been significantly deviated over the three periods. The first one coincided by intensifying of war till 1987. The second deviation was relatively limited during the period of 1995-2001. And the third one, which was the most extreme deviation, started since 2006 and continued till 2015 which eroded gradually. According to the results of this study, real exchange rate deviation can be considered as one the historical & chronic challenges of Iran Economy.

Classical economists saw growth as the result of the interaction of economic factors and their rational choice in a competitive environment. Although these economists played attention on the role of institutions in economic growth, but the explicit attention to the impact of institutions on economic performance should be attributed to the late nineteenth century and the publication of the book, The theory of the Leisure class, by Torsten-Vebln's. With the reappearance of endogenous growth models in the 1980s and the importance of human capital, serious attention paid to the role of institutions in economic growth theories. It seems that the reason for this long-term interruption in the entry of institutions into economic growth models has attributed to recognition and the way of influencing, because the impact of institutions usually is indirect on growth, and this effect carried out through various channels, including entrepreneurship. This research studied for the first time on the effects of rule of law and control of corruption (formal institutional factors) as well as fears of failure and conception of entrepreneurial ability (informal institutional factors) on entrepreneurship in the case of MENA countries during 2008-2015. Using panel data and three-stage least squares method (3SLS), we find that the rule of law and corruption control has a positive and significant effect and fear of failure has a negative and significant relationship with entrepreneurship. In addition, conception entrepreneurial ability has no positive and significant effect on entrepreneurship and ultimately entrepreneurship has had a positive effect on economic growth.

The main purpose of this study is to study the effects of oil revenues shocks on household consumption in the economy of Iran over period 1973-2014. In order to achieve this goal, firstly, the positive and negative shocks of oil prices have been extracted using the Hodric-Prescott (HP) approach. Subsequently, by applying the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) method and using the error correction pattern (ECM), the effects of oil revenue shocks on household consumption in the long run and in the short run are estimated. The results of the long-run model estimation show that in the long run, the positive and negative shocks of oil revenues had a significant positive and negative effect on household consumption, respectively. In the short run, the positive and negative shocks of oil revenues are not significant. So, the Iranian households’ consumption is affected by positive and negative shocks in the long run. The spillover of oil revenues increases the liquidity and false demand for goods and services in Iran. Thus, the targeted spending of oil revenues and the allocating it for investments decrease the liquidity and inflation and avoid the false demand of Iranian households.