JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH
Year:2018 | Volume:8 | Issue:30 |Papers Count:11

Economic growth is one of the key variables measuring economic performance of any country. So it is very important to understand the factors influencing it. In this paper, a selection of some institutional and political variables along with basic variables affecting economic growth have been used to analyze their effects on economic growth in period 1980 to 2013. Eight comparative models by applying ARDL method and using Eviews software have been estimated. The research results indicate that the fundamental political and social parameters have stronger impact on economic growth in comparison of basic variables. The variables of democracy, the quality of law, economic freedom, openness, human development and good governance directly influence economic growth in Iran.

This article has endeavored to study in experimental survey, the effect of Central Bank Independence (CBI) on the output and inflation fluctuations in the Iranian economy, using vector Autoregressive (VAR) econometrics method. For this purpose, we started with the changes in output and inflation stability in bringing about good economic performance, over the period 1961-2014 years. The paper has introduced a new legal combined Central Bank Independence index, by the name of "Average (Mean) Index". According to the 40% amount of total on the base of this new index, it has been cleared that there was independence just during 1340-1361 period. The results of Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) method indicated that the inflation and output variances trends were approximately inverse over this period, except in some short periods. The estimation of study model revealed the negative and significant of Central Bank Independence effect on output and inflation variances. It means an increase in Central Bank Independence will cause decreasing their fluctuations and will results more macroeconomic stability and better economic performance. According to the result of Variance Decomposition and analysis of Impulse-Response Functions, the positive impact of central bank independence on macroeconomic stability has been confirmed, but it was much more effective on the nominal sector and shrinking the inflation uncertainty than real sector and output instability.

Food security is a main component of physical, mental and psychological health of any society and is a criterion for human development. Food security and access to safe and adequate food is of the main pillars of economic growth and development; so it is of the main goals of every country. War and insecurity damage food security. War is the increased major cause of poverty, unemployment and food insecurity. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of war on food security in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries in the period 1990-2014. In order to estimate the model for investigating the issue, the unbalanced panel data method was used. Results showed that war has the negative and significant impact on food security. Gross domestic product per capita, the size of the rural population, the ratio of arable land surface to total land surface and the use of agricultural machinery per hectare variables had positive and significant impact, and the size of the total population had negative and significant impact on food security. Thus, any attempt to reduce conflict means to improve food security and growth and development.

This paper mainly focuses on the development of electricity supply system in Iran. A bottom-up energy system model is employed to identify the optimal generation mix. The model minimizes the total system costs using linear mix-integer programming under a set of technical, economic and environmental constraints. Then, the optimal generation mix is compared with the actual transition pathway during the planning horizon. The comparison of historical development trend with the optimal scenario (model results) indicates that: 1-The average efficiency of thermal power plants is 4. 5 percent lower than the optimal conditions, 2-Optimal pathway could save 90 billion cubic meters of natural gas and prevent CO2 emissions of 400 million tonnes over the study period, and 3-The annual additional costs of $630 million was imposed due to lack of funding.

The level of GDP and its growth rate are the most important performance indices in macroeconomics. Therefore, investigation of the effective factors on economic growth is especially significant and one of the most important issues in the field of macroeconomics. The review of literature related to economic growth, showed that granularity in banking is one of the effective factors on economic growth. This paper has studied the simultaneous effects of trade openness and granularity in banking on Iran’ s economic growth. Generalized Method of Moments has been used to test the hypotheses. The data has been used in this research is Iran macroeconomics data and data related to Iran Banking network in the years 2001-2012. As expected, The results show that bank granular residual variable and simultaneous effect variable of trade openness and bank granular residual have a negative and significant effect on Iran’ s economic growth.

Economic instability affects the domestic money that economic agents are willing to hold. For example in an uncertain inflationary environment, they prefer to less demand for money and use those asset which has less risk of maintenance, such as foreign currency and foreign assets. The use of foreign currency as a store of value is "dollarization". This study examines the impact of economic instability on the unofficial dollarization in Iran. For this purpose, we estimate the degree of dollarization by Kamin and Ericsson (2003) and El-Erian (1988) method, then obtain a composite macroeconomic instability index with the consumer price index, exchange rate, stock of international reserves, interest rate and budget deficit, then examine by using a vector auto regression model over the period of 1979 to 2014. The results indicate that economic instability affects dollarization positively. The impulse response function shows that a one-standard error shock in instability increases dollarization at first, and gradually reduced. The results of variance decomposition also show that in long term instability index can explain fluctuation of the dollarization.

The relationship between foreign direct investment and economic growth is an issue that has always been of importance for economists. It is believed that foreign direct investment (FDI) is necessary to promote economic growth and capital formation in every country, particularly in the developing countries. Since it has been discussed that FDI promotes economic growth not only by increasing the volume of financial funds and relaxing the constraint on investment financed by domestic savings but also by technology and management skills transfer from advanced economies to developing economies in the context of endogenous growth models, it is necessary to examine the effect of FDI on economic growth via the above mentioned channels. In this study, we examine the effects of FDI on capital formation, labor productivity and economic growth. We try to test the hypothesis that FDI helps economic growth in developing countries not only via capital formation but also via the increase in productivity. To test this hypothesis, we use a panel data approach in a simultaneous equations system including three equations and three groups consisting of 111 developing countries over the time period 1995-2013. Our method of estimation is 2SLS. Our results show that in the sample we have examined, productivity has a higher effect on economic growth than capital formation. Therefore, the hypothesis that “ FDI, by increasing productivity, has a positive effect on economic growth” is not rejected.

Post Keynesian growth model considers the use of production factors as a function of production and introduces demand as the main determinant of economic growth. Accordingly, Thirlwall (1979) presented a model suggesting that demand is restrained by the balance of payments deficit and turns into substantial limitations to achieve higher economic growth rate owing to balance of payments deficit. This model is known as Thirlwall law or “ balance of payments constrained growth model” . In this model the maximum rate of economic growth consistent with the balance-of-payments equilibrium is figured out using income elasticity of import and export. Identifying the barriers to achieving the target growth rate has been turned into one of the most controversial economic issues because of the challenges of low economic growth in Iran. Thus this study is going to provide an answer to the question that, based on Thirlwall law, Whether the balance of payments deems obstacles to the target growth rates of development programs for the Iran’ s economy or not? To accomplish this, first the long run cointegration relationship of import and export demand functions was approved by autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL). Then, regarding the importance of the elasticities of above functions on the results of the study and removing the structural instability of the model coefficients, time– varying parameter (TVP) and Kalman – filter were used to estimate the elasticities. Finally the validity of Thirlwall law was not confirmed during 1984-2013 applying Wald Test. Therefore, it can be claimed that aggregate demand has not restricted the economic growth through the balance of payments. Low income elasticity of import, combination of imports, restrictions on imports and dependence of foreign trade on oil revenues are the most important reasons for the results.

The main objective of this study is investigating the effect of economic and social infrastructure on economic growth gap within the framework of panel data method among Iran's provinces during the period (2006-2012). In this context, conditional and non-conditional convergency hypothesis related to province's economic growth has tested. The results show endorsement of both types of convergency of economic growth in the provinces of Iran. Economic infrastructure including communications and energy has a significant positive influence on economic growth. By entering the economic infrastructure variables in the equation of convergency the economic growth gap in the regions is reduced. Combined index of social infrastructure has the significant negative impact on economic growth in provinces. So that there are significant positive effect of health expenditure and the significant negative impact of education expenditure on economic growth in provinces. Therefore in order to reduce the gap in economic growth in the country's provinces, paying more attention to economic infrastructure and health sector and to review the allocation of resources in the educational sector is recommended.

Optimum pricing of energy carriers is one of the effective tools for improving the efficiency of energy-scarce resources. Considering the importance of increasing the price of energy carriers and their impact on the economy, more comprehensive studies in this area seem necessary. Considering the importance of increasing the price of energy carriers and its impact on the economy more comprehensive studies in this area seem necessary. In this research the increase in the price of energy carriers and its effects on household consumption expenditure are based on two methods of pricing the output of government price control and the method of partitioning the economic sectors into energy and non-energy using the net output table to the base prices of Central Bank of 2005. The findings of this study assuming that the dimensions of the household are not considered, suggests that the modification of the price of energy carriers reduces the consumption of households in terms of quantity and rank. By modifying the price of gasoline based on the implementation of the second phase of the law, the objective of subsidies in the energy and nonenergy sector is increasing and in the state control and noncontrol method ignoring the slight changes will have a neutral effect on the share of household consumption expenditure. The correction of natural gas prices in the energy and nonenergy method has a decreasing effect and in the control and non-control method of the government here will be a decreasing effect on the share of consumption expenditures. If we do not consider these very slight changes it could be said that the rise in natural gas prices has a detrimental effect on household expenditures. Finally, he change in electricity prices in a non-energy and energy way will decrease the effect and in the control and non-control method of government will have a decreasing effect on the share of consumption of households. Therefore comparing the two models shows that the gradual correction of the price of energy carriers has less distributive effects and reduces the share of household consumption expenditures but reduces the level of vulnerability of households to the simultaneous rectification of prices.