JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT (THE ECONOMIC RESEARCH)
Year:2010 | Volume:9 | Issue:4|Papers Count:10

Economic liberalization policy has been among the major concern of the governments during the last few decades. However, its impact on economic growth is still a controversial issue. The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of trade liberalization and financial development on economic growth in Iran using annual observations over the period 1973-2007. The current study would use ARDL technique to estimate the empirical model.The findings of this paper indicate that there is a long run positive and significant relationship between trade liberalization and financial development and economic growth in Iran over the period of the study. The error correction coefficient is around 0.32 showing that the adjustment towards the long run equilibrium takes place within almost three years. The Granger causality test indicates that causality runs from trade liberalization and financial development to GDP.

There are many factors affecting economic growth. Based on the literature, the effects of these factors such as higher education are mainly examined using endogenous economic growth theories. Various theoretical models are used to estimate the relation among variables affecting economic growth. This paper investigates the effects of higher education human capital on the economic growth in Iran using the endogenous growth models. The specified model includes human capital, physical investment and foreign debt which are identified as the main determinants of economic growth in Iran. Two dummy variables are included in the model in order to represent the effects of Islamic revolution and imposed war. The Johnson five steps approach is employed to estimate the empirical model. The results confirm that higher education human capital has a relatively large and statistically significant effect on the economic growth in Iran. It is found that the growth elasticity of higher education human capital is larger than the growth impact of physical capital investment. So, in order to obtain a high rate of economic growth in the country, investment in higher education human capital must be increased. Moreover, based on the findings, it is recommended that the investment should be made using domestic saving instead of financing abroad.

Considering changes in economic conditions and global priorities in the last decade, development objectives such as poverty reduction and income distribution were typically cast in terms of economic growth. Therefore, poverty reduction through rural development was at the center of government development plan.  The objective of this study is to analyze the impact of government spending on the rural economic development. The development indicators included in the model comprise agricultural production, non-farm employment and poverty reduction. To this end, the elasticity of the above indicators is estimated with respect to rural infrastructures such as education, transportation, telecommunication and electricity capacity and then linkage between rural infrastructures and government spending are identified. A system of simultaneous equations approach is used to model and estimate the equations using the data over the period 1981-2005. Results of estimate indicate that government spending have positive and significant impact on the poverty reduction and non-farm employment. 

Governments of developing countries typically spend between 15 and 30 percent of GDP. Hence, small changes in the efficiency of public spending could have a major impact on GDP and on the attainment of the development's objectives.This paper presents a framework where data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to assess the efficiency of expenditure in education and health sectors. More specifically, this paper assesses efficiency and seeks to establish a link between difference in efficiency level across countries and policy conditions. The data are used for a sample of member states of organization of the Islamic conference (OIC) over the 2000-20005 period. The findings show that under 5 year old mortality rates, malnourishment prevalence and immunization rates are the main determinants of deficiency in health sector of sample countries. Moreover, enrolment ratio, more specifically in secondary school, is the major factor that affects public spending efficiency in the education sector. In addition, results show that because of international aid programs, on average, countries in Africa are more efficient than those in Asia and Middle East.

The aim of this study is to examine the main determinants of visitors' willingness to Pay (WTP) for the Pasargad Historical Palaces using contingent valuation method (CVM). To this end, the data are collected using questionnaire throughout a random sample of the citizens of Isfahan, Shiraz and Marvdasht. The data include socio-economic information and visitors' willingness to pay. The variables considered in the WTP model comprise gender, age, education, occupation, income, household size, environmental attitude and distance. Considering the characteristics of the data, the Probit and Tobit techniques are employed to estimate the model.The empirical results indicate that the average visitors’ willingness to pay is 114530 Rials. Moreover, the results confirm that the gender, household size, distance and income have statistically significant effects on visitors’ willingness to pay. However, the results show that the women are more likely to pay more than men. Based on the individuals willingness to pay and the number of visitors, the value of Pasargad Palaces from the point of view of the domestic visitors and consumption surplus exceed to 6640 and 6060 million Rials, respectively.

In recent years economists have become increasingly interested in Institutionalism. Institutionalism has different branches and encountered some critics. In this article, we first rely on comparative study to review the institutionalism and provide new division in the paradigm and then examine the Searle's critics to institutionalists for their neglect to language as an important institution while it is central to philosophical concerns.Findings of this study indicate that considering language as an institution, this relates institutional theory to the so called discourse theory. Therefore, such a correlation would improve institutional theory.

In this paper we have studied the trend and bias of technological change in Iran’s cement industry by dual cost function approach. This approach is useful to estimation of factors demand structure with regard to changes of factors price and technological situation. We estimated a translog cost function in addition to equations system of cost share, using Seemingly Unrelated Regression Equation (SURE) approach during the period 1355-1385. The results show that the rate of technological change has been -1.12 percent during the studied years. It means that there is a decrease in rate of cost of productive units along with time. Furthermore, the results indicate that technological change has been biased towards the use of more energy.