Iranian Journal of Economic Research
Year:2005 | Volume:6 | Issue:21|Papers Count:9

According to the importance of imports in the process of development, on the one hand, and limitation of foreign exchange reserves specially during the post revolutionary period, on the other hand, the Irans relevant trade policies have been mostly implemented towards import compression, and particularly directed towards imported capital and intermediate goods, and also specific trade partners. However, due to the globaiization process and Irans attempts for joining WTO, it seems that there is a need for changes in import structure based upon the countrys development requirements. This may be somehow conducted through trade liberalization. Due to the identification of this process, this paper tends to estimate the long-run import budget share, arising from various supplying resources for Iran. The formulation is based upon typical model of the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS). After estimating import demand, we test the hypothesises that import demand is homothetic, homogenous and symmetric. Using the dynamic adjustment process of the first order of Error Correction Model (ECM), the paper estimates the long-run balanced import budget shares, domestic sales share as well as long-run expenditure and compensated price elasticites over the 1978-2002 period. Estimation results obtained indicate that implementing a type of trade liberalization policy can possibly lead the share of domestic sales to decline, while total import budget share will grow resulting in trade creation, and particularly trade flows may be deviated from other partners to Irans second ten major trading partners.

Air pollution is an example of a negative externality; it imposes harmful effects and costs on people other than polluterS. In controlling air pollution, efficiency argument implies that, there is a rolefor the government to play. Studies show that taxation of fuels can be a powerful indirect instrumentfor controlling air polluticn because of the association between fuels use and emissions. In Iran, fuels consumption is highly subsidized and energy prices have for several yean been below opportunity costs as measured by border prices. The present study examined the impact of fuel price increases-removing energy subsidies-on the emissions of air pollutants in the industry sector. We analyze interfuel substitution in this sector-within a translog cost model-and combine the results with emission factors to assess the potential for emission reductions via demand changes. The empirical results indicale that: (1) substitution possibilities werefound for most combinations of fuel types in induStry sector; (2)for SOx, NOx, SPM and HC, emission elasticities with respect to the price of heavy petroleum products are -0.289, -0.220. -0.255 and -0.072, respectively. Also, a 10 percent price increasefor light petroleum products would reduce t0tal emissions of CO and HC by 3.36% and 0.47% respectively.

The purpose of this paper has been to estimate the impact of price and nonprice variables on non-oil exports of Iran. The non-oil exports are considred to be a function of monetary variables, such as the exchange rate, inflation rate, and two non-price variables, as productivity and competitiveness. We use the ARDL technique to estimate the relation. The results indicate that the non-price variabes play a significant role in promoting non-oil exports in Iran. Free exchange rate and inflation rate, though had positive sign, are not that important. These findings indicate that in order to increase the non-oil exports, Iran has to remove the constraints on the efficient functioning of price variables and emphasis more on "productivity" and "competitiveness".

Before the appearance of Islam, Dinar and Derham were the currencies of Byzantine and Iran, recpectively. These two currencies were current in pre- Islamic Arabia and continued to be the currencies of primary Islamic states. In 74 (AH) Islamic Dinar and Derham were coined. Estimating the value of Dinar and Derham is a matter of considerable importance to those doing research in Islamic Economics. The present article tends to estimate the value of these two currencies using two methods of purchasing power and natural value. The findings from the research show that each Dinar worths 293 to 350 thousand rials.

The movements in oil prices are complex and, therefore, seem to be unpredictable. The traditional linear structural models have not been promising when applied to forecasting, particularly in the case of complex series such as oil prices. Although linear and nonlinear time series models have done much better job in forecasting oil prices, there is yet room for an improvement. If the data generating process is nonlinear, applying linear models could result in misleading forecasts. Model specification in nonlinear modeling can also be very case dependent and time-consuming. In this paper, we model and forecast daily futures oil price, listed in NYMEX, applying ARIMA, and GARCH models, for the period April June 1983 - Jan. 2003. Then, we test for chaos using BDS, Lyapunov exponent, Neural Networks, and Embedding Dimension methods. Finally, we will set up a nonlinear and flexible ANN model to forecast the series. Since the tests for chaos indicate that the oil price in futures markets is chaotic, the ANN model should make better forecasts. The forecasts comparison among the models approves that.

One of the effective factors in identifying the export potentials of a country for implementing the appropriate trade policy is the existence of comparative advantage in production and export of the commodities. The idea is simply the fact that the countries, due to their comparative advantage in the production of goods will enter to the scene of international trade and will exchange commodities. To measure the comparative advantage, different kind of indexes has been introduced by economists among which that of Ballasa andVollrath could be mentioned. In this paper we investigate the "revealed comparative advantage" for the products of the Iranian Petrochemical Industry using the above mentioned index. The results show that Iran gains comparative advantage in exporting the products of petrochemical industry. The share of these exports from the whole manufacturing exports of the country, based on the papers calculation results, is shown to be increasing.

In this Paper financial services in the Iranian economy, which is portioned into 41 industries, is considered as a sector with a Leontief production function. Financial Sectors, buy inputs from other sectors, and provide services to expedite the cash fellows and risk transformation for other sectors. The former relations are called Backward Linkage and the later relations through which the sectors provide output to meet required cash fellow and risk reduction of economic activities are called Forward Linkage. In quantification of the linkages, employment and output elasticity, the forward index of value added, and backward linkage of final demand are used. Furthermore, direct and indirect effects of a hypothetical extraction of the sectors on output and employment are calculated. The results show that, although the linkages between financial sectors and the rest of the economic activities are not strong, their extraction will result in 225246.8 decrease in job opportunity, according to the 1370 input-output table produced by the Statistical Center of Iran.

This study analyzes the relationship between the households demand for formal services and their close substitutes in the informal economy (including do-it-yourself activities). The tax wedge is included in the analysis as an explanatory variable, which is used as a proxy for the ratio of the formal services prices to the price in the informal market. Using the Iranian macroeconomic time-series data, the Johanson-Juselius cointegration method and error correction model are applied to estimate the demand, and then the long-run price elasticities and tax wedge elasticities calculated. The structural changes due to economic shocks are examined by the estimated model.