Iranian Journal of Trade Studies
Year:2000 | Volume:4 | Issue:14|Papers Count:7

Prior to the shocks of 1974, Iran enjoyed one of the highest growth rate in non-oil exports in the world. The country"s growth rate after this time, declined to the lowest in the world and it has continued to be the same until now. This paper reveals the main reasons as demand mismanagement and the government exchange policies. In order to examine these assumptions, two models of general equilibrium based on the basic years of 1973 and 1991, with two different sector allocations, have been used. In these models, the performance of various policies, including the quantity and ways of spending government costs as well as different currency exchange policies are simulated. The results indicate that, by and large, non-oil exports have been increased together with increases in the oil revenues. This has led to a decrease in the domestic demand. The government policies can. affect this general orientation and sometimes shifts the changes towards the opposite direction. The simulation result shows, whenever the oil revenues decreases which follows by a decline in demand, government intervenes in the exchange market and implements exchange allocation policies. In these circumstances the possibility of decrease in the non-oil exports raises. It is worth saying that in comparison with flexible exchange policies, those allocation policies that lead to rises in the non-oil exports, are under optimum point and the cost of adjustment relative to national income decline is considerably higher than the flexible exchange system. If exchange allocations acoinsides with rent seeking activities, disregard of any alterations in the exports volume, the national income will severly decrease.

This paper attempts to calculate long term costs of Iran automotive industry (Iran Khodro, Saipa and Pars Khodro companies). The selected period to estimate the total factor productivity (TFP), technology changes (TC), and also return to scale and cost share is 1978-98. For estimation, transcendent logarithmic production function (TRANSLOG) has been used. This function is more flexible and, compare to other functions, has less limitations. Also, panel data method, a combination of time series and internal data, has been employed for this estimation. The estimation has been adjusted according to panel data literature, "ITSUR" method and "Fixed Effect Pattern". The focus af this paper is on technical developments, total factor productivity in the automotive industry of Iran during 1978-98 period. The paper contains five parts; the first part will review technical development and productivity. The second part defines the characteristic of the model. Third part explains estimations and test r methods. In the forth part data, information and statistical resources are described. The results in the fifth part reveals the cost share of raw material has been more than other production facto res and in this industry the return to scale is declining. On the other hand, the empirical results indicate by employing production factors more effectively productivity growth will be positive.

One of the effective elements in finding the appropriate outward oriented strategies for every country is the comparative advantage in the production and exports of goods. In this regard, numerous measures have been raised by economists like Balasa, Hillman and Eets to measure comparative advantages of all countries. One of the said measures which emphasizes on the export comparative advantage is Balasa"s Revealed Comparative Advantage and Hillman"s Condition. This paper attempts tb not only present theoretical foundations of these measures, but also explain the practical aspects of them. Since detergents are among the most important industrial export products, they are selected for export comparative advantage analysis. The result Qf this study indicate that Iran does not have export comparative advantage in detergents (washing powders, cleaning liquids) and their export performance are declining.

The importance of accurate and precise estimations of economic variables in making correct and appropriate decisions as well as the existence of different methods of time series forecasts have been the motivations of this study to compare Nerves Network Model with ARIMA Model. The data inputs used in this study include monthly prices of milk from March 1992 to February 1997. The results derived from compared estimated values of a 12 month period from March 1996 to February 1997, with the real values, shows that average square errors in the Nerves Network Model to ARIMA Model is 8.85 percent less. Also, the average percentage of absolute errors is 21.79 percent less in the Nerves Network. Model than ARIMA Model. Although, the Nerves Network Model forecasts cannot be explained by statistical methods and cannot fall between a confidence interval, however, this model could be used in forecasting of such variables in a more precIse manner.

The main objective of this paper is to present an estimation of food security index in Iran. First, the necessity of paying attention to food security and the place of this concept in theoretical approaches are reviewed. Then, by taking advantage of the model introduced by "International Fund of agricultural Development (IFAD)", the index of food security for the period of 1981-96 is estimated by commodity groups and in total. The final part includes the summary and conclusions.

This paper sulveys the meat market. Primarily, the importance, objectives, assumptions and methodology of the study are discussed. Then production quality, imports and per capita consumption of red meat are addressed. Red meat demand is estimated by rural and urban areas as well as its domestic supply and the demand of barley input. Then based on population trend, per capita income is prices the demand and domestic supply of red meat are forecasted by exploiting estimation functions. Also, by estimation, barley input are forecasted. If necessary, required quantities to be imported in the years between 1999 until 2001 has also been calculated. The paper presents estimation of red meat demand function by urban and rural areas as well as its supply, barley input demand, imports of red met, imports of barley and required exchange allocation in the coming years based on different scenarios. In the first scenario it is assumed the price of red meat is the same as the average rate of growth in the period of 1989-96. The second and third scenarios one and two percent more than the average growth rate of the said period are assumed respectively. The latter scenarios are based on diminishes in the government intervention in the imports with fixed rate exchange rate and increase in the imports of private sector with market rate exchange rates. Based on the first and second scenarios, the imports quantity of red meat in 1989 is nil and for the years 2000-2001 has a rising trend. In the third scenario, the imports of red meat will happen only in 2001. Imports of barley has an increasing trend in all three scenarios in the years 1999-2001. In addition, the trend of exchange intensity of barley is decreasing where as for red meat shows a rising trend. These result indicate that self sufficiency in red meat is too optimistic and imports of this commodity will increase in the coming years.

The purpose of this paper is to identify fluctuations in the acceleration of money circulation in Iran and to explain the reasons of such fluctuations from the monetarist"s point of view. This study, makes every effort to examine the monetarist theorem and their monetary policies against critics. In this manner, the concept of alterations in money circulation acceleration (Fridman, 1984) in Iran will be tested. The results of this study indicate that at least one of the variables explaining money fluctuations is monetary instability. As a result, the views of monetarists and their monetary policies may still be valid in explaining inflation.