Iranian Journal of Economic Research
Year:2008 | Volume:- | Issue:33|Papers Count:9

The new economy is a knowledge driven economy in a sense that both production and consumption goods and services are increasingly depended on knowledge and information rather than physical materials. However, we are now at the beginning of understanding the economics of new goods. The value created by new goods must somehow be converted into an exact quantitative measure. This study analyzes the relevance of the information sector in Iranian economy using Jensen and West (1986) and West (1993) methodologies. WE apply the mixed variable approach to the Input-Output table of Iran 1380. The overall results show that the direct and indirect contribution of the value added, employment and income of information sector in the entire economy are 6.4, 4.4 and 9 percent, respectively.

It has been less than two decades that ICT is regarded by economists as one of the factors of productivity growth. The IGT capital bears the features of knowledge capital, so it can influence productivity growth both through capital deepening and its spillover effects. There have been many studies in the literature on the effect of ICT on productivity; however, the TFP effect of ICT in international context is less known. This paper investigates the relation between ICT spillovers and TFP growth using a panel data for 69 countries for the period 1993-2003. The results show both ICT domestic investment and ICT international spillovers have positive and significant effects on TFP growth across the countries. However the ICT impact on TFP is higher in developed countries than that in developing countries. According to the findings of this study, we conclude that the developing countries can benefits more from ICT investment if they have required infrastructure such as human capital and a trade openness policy.

In the last two decades, economists have been studying the role of information in the economy using various models. Although "information" has been used under different meanings, the main aim of the models have been to show the process of economic transformation, from a resource - based economy to an information'-based economy. Applying the partial equilibrium models, analysts confirm such transformation in countries like Iran. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between the information and the economy using a general equilibrium model. To this end, we use the Input-Output tables of Iran for the years 1988-1999 and India for the years 1994-1999. We analyze the process of transformation (structural changes) in these two countries with respect to substitution trend between energy block and information block. The results show coexistence and complementary trend between these two blocks in Iran and substitution trend in India.

Recent developments in the information and communication technology (ICT) have had remarkable impacts on all economic activities worldwide. Although the direct impact of ICT investment on productivity has been shown in many studies, little is known about the spillover effects of ICT, specially at the international level. In this paper, we study the ICT spill over effects on the labor productivity applying an augmented neo-classical growth model. Our data consists of a panel of 69 countries for the period 1993-2003. We use ICT investments in other countries weighted by imports as a proxy for the spill over variable. The results show that both ICT and its spillover have positive impacts on the productivity worldwide, but the effects are stronger in developed countries.

The advent of the Internet and ICT, as the souvenir of the third millennium, has changed various aspects of human life and directed the world toward the establishment of the universal integrated village. By reducing the cost of communication considerably, internet has expanded the cultural, social, and economic relationship among nations. In particular, Internet has played an important role in international trade and finance, and the e-commerce share of the world's trade has been rapidly increasing. This paper investigates the effects of the use of internet on the exports in selected Asian countries; we set up a simultaneous equation macro-model, and use a Panel fixed effect method to estimate the model. The data consists of the members of the ASEAN+3 (Singapore, Philippine, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, China) as well as Iran over the period 1992-2002. The estimation results indicate that one percent increase in the number of internet users on average leads to a 0.044percentincreasein the volume of total exports.

In this paper I illustrate a theoretical framework which shows underlying conditions for creation, development and utilization of a new idea in an economic system and its effects on the economic performance. The significance of this theory is in its emphasis on main determinants of innovation and its diffusion and their interactions. In fact this theoretical framework is based on the most important property of innovations (i.e. systemmicness). The national innovation system is a theoretical framework that shows how new science and technologies are created, improved and adopted in the economy. Moreover this theory provides a useful framework for designing and organizing the science and technology policies in every country.

In the era of economic globalization and enhancement of information technology, trade flows have increased dramatically among countries. In the meanwhile, the contribution of e-commerce to this global phenomenon has been continuously increasing so that e-commerce will be faced with a much higher rate of growth in the future through the worldwide Internet users and mass production of software and hardware devices. This should remove time and geographical distances and make border-less trade between all countries around the world. This paper uses a generalized gravity model to examine the effect of e-commerce on the bilateral trade flows between the selected WTO member countries. The model is estimated by the panel data model over 2000-2005 where the required data are obtained from international sources such as the IMF and World Bank reports. Overall, the results obtained indicate that as a result of one percent increase in e-commerce variable, the bilateral trade flows between the countries will rise by about 5 percent. This implies the more effective presence of e-commerce in the trade relations, and the less effect of physical distance on these relations. More specifically, distance variable losses its role in international trade.