JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT (THE ECONOMIC RESEARCH)
Year:2013 | Volume:13 | Issue:1|Papers Count:12

Tourism plays a growing role in developing countries and is considered as a way of government deficit reduction, gaining foreign exchange and creating jobs. In addition, it is viewed as a channel of getting away from single product economies. In fact, tourism is an industry with multi-dimensional impacts on different sectors of economy. Therefore, it can also be viewed as an important development factor in Isfahan province. In this study, the impacts of international tourist expenditures on income generation, allocation, distribution, consumption and savings in different economic sectors of Isfahan province has been analyzed using Social Account Matrix (SAM) technique, supported by input-output matrix. The results show that financial sector has a very poor performance in this regard in terms of generating revenues coming from international tourists. Although the government sector has the highest share regarding the initial allocation of income, but due to the transactions happening among structural sectors, households have been the main gainers of this income generation. In fact, almost 84% of the generated revenues in this way have been consumed.

In this paper, it is tried to propose a robust model for predicting inflation in Iran among alternative models. For doing this, monthly data from April 1990 to the end of September 2009 is used. Firstly, it is tried to determine whether the CPI data is chaotic or stochastic. It is shown that it is chaotic rather than stochastic. Therefore, it is predictable. Then, a stochastic differential equation model is estimated (specifically a geometric Brownian motion) for CPI in Iran. In order to compare the prediction power of the model other alternative models of prediction like ARMA, non-linear GARCH, EGARCH, TGARCH are also used to extrapolate inflation during a six month prediction period. Based on RMSE, MAE, U-Tail, it is revealed that stochastic differential equation model is much more robust than the alternative models mentioned above.

In recent decades, the new technologies have been thoroughly discussed to have great impacts on growth in economics literature. This study is aiming at investigating the impact of ICT and social welfare on economic growth. For this purpose, cross-provincial estimation was used by panel data from 2002 to 2006. The variables which are used in this research are per capita GDP, age indicator ICT investment, human capital and pe capita physical investment. The results show that social welfare and ICT have a positive and significant impact on economic growth in all provinces of the country.

This study examines the relationship between financial sector development and poverty reduction in the Iranian economy during 1973-2007. To explore a long-term relationship between variables, Bounds Testing Approach of Pesaran and others (2001) was used and to investigate the interface and causality between financial sector development and poverty reduction Dolado and Lutkepohl’s approach and causalty test (1996) was applied. In this paper for showing financial development, three alternative indicators and for representing poverty the cost of private consumption per capita are used. Results from this study indicate a long-term relationship between variables in the model. Dolado and Lutkepohl causality test results also show that financial development is not effective in poverty reduction.

Self-employment is a crucially important subject in an economy, especially for a country with high unemployment rate. This paper studies the determinant factors of self employment in Iran during 1996-2006 using a panel data method. The results show that unemployment rate per province, the ratio of 15-65 age bracket to total population of the country, and the share of each province to total GDP aren’t statically significant. While the ratio of urban population to total population for each province has a negative coefficient in self-employment equation, the ratio of R&D expenditure to GDP and literacy rate has a positive one.

Forced labor for children and their employment in the labor market when they should grow and develop skills for their future life will cause them serious harms which can in turn result in negative consequences for their whole life. One of the major reasons for child labor is the poverty of the family. It is believed that if poverty is removed, child labor will be naturally terminated as a result. Many countries see poverty eradication as part of their responsibilities and in this regard they determine poverty line and try to measure the child and his family life as a basis in their analyses. If the line is taken to be high, based on a cause and effect relationship the number of child labor cases will be low and if poverty line is taken to be low, the number of child labor cases will be high. These countries adopt different approaches to determine poverty line and there is no agreement among scholars on its nature and scope. Therefore, in practice, some set high standards while some others set low standards for determining poverty line and this has a direct effect on how much support governments provide for the low-income families. To alleviate poverty through Zakat, Muslim jurists also set a poverty line. As with others, there is no agreement among Muslim jurists regarding poverty line either. Some take it to be high while others take it to be low and this again will have a direct impact on how child labor issue should be resolved in Muslim countries. This study aims at comparatively investigating the issue of poverty line from different jurisprudential perspectives and how different perspectives can influence the way child labor can be looked at. It is also emphasized that determining poverty line as the sufficiency line by Muslim rulers is a much more effective way in preventing child labor in comparison to other ways, since it considers an important factor which is the status of the people. In this paper, first, some preliminary issues such as vulnerability of children and determining poverty line by rulers will be discussed. Then, the article will elaborate on different poverty lines from Islamic Shariah perspective and their relationship with other conventional poverty lines. Finally, the article will argue that sufficiency basis for determining poverty line from Islamic point of view is the most effective one in preventing child labor.

Location analysis could lead to reduction of costs of establishing and running economic activities. Sometimes, choosing an incorrect location could dramatically increase the costs. A suitable location for economic activities is one of the most important factors in having a good urban space for citizens, firms and municipalities. In cities, most of firms are service providers. Due to the existence of external economies of scale and reduction of costs, especially transportation costs, firms are usually located near together. Clustering similar firms can lead to decreasing costs, facilitating shopping for buyers and attracting potential buyers. This study tries to investigate the distribution of economic activities in Isfahan, as well as determining specialized and diversified zones of the city. It also analyses effective factors on locating different activities. Thus, specialization and diversification of all 14 zones of Isfahan are measured and then a regression model is specified and estimated by GMM approach. Results show that number of banks has positive effect on location of different activities. Meanwhile, specialization and diversification, which are the result of the economies of scale in localized and urbanized agglomerations, are critical factors on choosing locations in the city.

Creating and supporting small and medium-sized industries in economic development programs and the emphasis on improving efficiency and productivity in the policies adopted, shows the vital position of such industries in developed as well as developing economies. In general, the most important role of these industries in the economic development process can be summarized as; effective employment, production and supply chain management, creating value added and reducing dependence on unnecessary commodity imports. Since any improvement in the efficiency of small scale industries will bring more equitable distribution of income, the main purpose of this study is to measure the performance of various technical, management and scale efficiencies in subsectors of small scale industries and provide policy recommendations to the inefficient industries. For this purpose, the principal component analysis (PCA) and factor analysis is used to determine the variables of the model and the DEA is used for evaluation and sensitivity analysis of the factors affecting the efficiency and productivity of small scale industries during the period 2002 - 2007. The results show that out of 22 industries, only 8 ones are found to be perfectly efficient. Productivity measurement of these industries according to the "Malmquist" index reveals that, the trend of productivity enjoys positive growth.

With globalization getting momentum, capital inflow has been an instrument for economies to grow fast in recent decades. Hence, identifying the factors that affect capital inflow and outflow - net international capital mobility- would be desirable to achieve economic stability. As usual, one of the factors that influence on capital inflow is high return of capital. New experiments explore the crucial role of risk and liquidity intensive on net international capital mobility. So, the purpose of this study is to analyze the analytical impact of credit risk scoring on the net international capital mobility in Iran within the period of 1980-2009. To achieve credit risk scoring, the Fink’s scoring model has been used to identify the determinants of credit risk. Then, the rank of each factor has been appeared separately and finally the country’s credit risk scoring has been estimated. Then, the final model using time series data and ordinary least squares method are analyzed. The impact of liquidity, different return of inside and outside and credit risk on net international capital mobility in Iran are discussed at the end of the paper. The results show that all mentioned variables have an anticipated effect on net capital inflow.