JOURNAL OF THE MARCO AND STRATEGIC POLICIES
Year:2019 | Volume:6 | Issue:4 (24)|Papers Count:8

Globalization concept refers to world compression, ever-increasing consciousness about the world as a whole, and its mutual and real interdependency and integration. The main purpose of this research is to identify and present required strategies for Iran’ s higher education system in the globalization era. The research method is descriptive-analytic in which the relevant experts analyze the viewpoints and documents of the Iran’ s higher education system. Research results indicated that higher education system should exercise four strategies for properly reacting to globalization. These strategies include qualitative improvement along the quantitative expansion, diversification the funding resources, research in commercialization and completing the science, technology and wealth chain, and finally, increase the scientific and university transactions at international level. Furthermore, this study recommends solutions for implementing all these strategies one by one.

The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the trend of sustainability indices of energy during two first-5-year periods in Iran’ s outlook 2025 (2005-2009 and 20102014). In order to evaluate the sustainability of the energy system, we applied the combined sustainable energy index (SEDI). Our study dimensions included are technical, economic, social, environmental, and institutional ones. After calculating the sustainability of all dimensions, they were normalized based on the HDI index calcu-lation method. Afterwards, SEDI index was computed, i. e., by averaging the 5 dimen-sions. The results indicated that technical, economic, and social dimensions in the first 5-year period had positive sustainability rate, but in the second period, unlike technical and economic dimensions that their sustainability rates increased a little, social dimension rate experienced reduction. Environmental and institutional dimensions and also SEDI index had negative sustainability rate in the first 5-year period. SEDI sustainability rate in the second 5-year period became positive (but insignificant) and experienced a sustainable path. Sustainability rate of the environmental dimension in the second 5-year period with a slight improvement still remained negative, and contrary to this dimension, the institutional dimension became more unstable.

The main purpose of this paper is to evaluate Value-Added Tax (VAT) effectiveness on income distribution in a group of selected countries with average revenue. One of the challenges of tax policymakers is to apply the VAT system despite its repressive effects. Although VAT is applied on all goods and services with the same rate, regardless of price elasticity and price elasticity of demand, the result is the transfer of the tax burden to consumers. Therefore, it opposes with the principle of tax equity and if overlooked, could end in distrust between taxpayers (consumers) and government and encourage people to evade paying taxes. The results of the study model using fixed effects and Generalized Method of Movement in middle-income selected countries during 1995-2015 showed that VAT has a significant and positive effect on the Gini coefficient as income distribution index. Increasing the VAT rate resulted in increasing the Gini coefficient and inequity.

Western Asia has always been in the midst of tension and now experiences a water crisis as a result of water shortage supplies simultaneous with the population growth. The lack of water has caused some disputes and even conflicts at political level between the countries of the region. Iran is also witnessing a decrease in water resources due to rising water consumption, so it needs to manage its relations with its neighboring countries from a hydro-political perspective. In this regard, agreements based on the rights of beneficiary countries on the use of common water resources have been concluded in accordance with international law and cooperation in the utilization of shared water resources, but there are still disputes regarding the exploitation of water resources with some neighboring countries, such as Afghanistan, due to previous contracts imposed on Iran by the United Kingdom and other superpowers. This research, through an analytical and applied approach, attempts to reply to the question that what Iran’ s hydro-diplomacy towards its neighbors is and what strategies are needed to activate the country’ s hydro-diplomacy towards neighboring countries.

Human capital is one of the important factors affecting the relationship between inequality and economic growth. Depending on the status of human capital in the country, the impact of inequality on economic growth will be different. Failure to notice this concept in theoretical and experimental studies will result in identification errors and misleading results that mostly overlooked by Iranian researchers. In this study, we will examine the impact of inequality on growth in Iran under different levels of human capital, using time series data for the years 1969 to 2014. Data modelling is based on threshold regression compared to other estimation methods, provides more consistent estimates. The results of the model indicate that in Iran, the impact of income inequality on economic growth has been negative, but the negative effect of inequality on economic growth decreased in line with the maturity of the economy and increase in the level of human capital. Also, the combined effect of physical capital and human capital on economic growth has increased along with the levels of human capital and the maturity of the economy.

This study aims to investigate the effect of foreign exchange rate and trade policies on crop exports in Iran. Regarding foreign exchange policies, the exchange rate volatility index and the dummy variable of currency uniformity policy were considered, while economic openness index as well as the trade bias coefficient index was studied for business policies. Logarithmic model of export supply function based on the ARDL and error correction model were used to estimate long-and short-term relations between variables. The research data were collected from the websites of the International Trade Statistics Database and the Central Bank of Iran from 1997 to 2014. The results showed that variables of commercial deviation coefficient, real exchange rate, economic openness, domestic product price, stone fruits export value in previous years and the dummy variable of currency uniformity policy all had a positive effect, in the long term, on Iranian stone fruits export. The coefficient for error correction model equals-0. 42, which is quite significant indicating a very high modulation pace to a long-term equilibrium. In addition, the results revealed that, in the event of shock and distortion in balance in each period, 0. 58% of the short-term imbalance has been adjusted to achieve long-term equilibrium.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of sanctions on Iran’ s non-oil exports during the period 1979-2013. The method of this research is to document the data and analyze the econometric model with structural time series method which has modelled factors influencing non-oil exports. The results of the model estimation have shown that sanctions have a significant negative effect on non-oil exports of the country. Also, real GDP, openness rate, and real exchange rate have a significant and positive effect on non-oil exports of the country. The terms of trade or the ratio of the price index of exported goods to imported goods have a significant and negative effect on non-oil exports. The results also show that the level and gradient of the underlying trend have a significant effect on non-oil exports, which shows the significant effect of the non-visible factors on non-oil exports. Based on the results of the research, the necessity of adopting economic policies based on the development of non-oil exports and dealing with sanctions is proposed.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is one of the important factors in the growth and development of countries and has been flourished in recent decades. This type of fundraising investment depends on several factors; knowing these factors can be useful in policy-making in countries unable to make proper use of FDI. The present study utilizes the Panel Data model and The Generalized Method of Moments to investigate the impact of institutional quality and exchange market pressure on foreign direct investment in 30 middle-income countries over a period of 2002-2015. The estimation results show that the exchange market pressure has a negative and significant effect, and the general index of governance has a positive and significant effect on FDI attraction. In addition, indicators of political stability, quality of laws and regulations, and control of corruption have had a positive effect on foreign direct investment, and among these components, the index of quality of laws and regulations have had the greatest impact. Moreover, the estimation of the pattern over the interaction term shows that institutional quality has reduced the impact of the exchange market pressure and economic uncertainty on FDI attraction.