JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT (THE ECONOMIC RESEARCH)
Year:2007 | Volume:7 | Issue:2|Papers Count:8

Social capital and its role in economic performance have increasingly attracted the attention of the economists in recent years. In this paper, firstly, the definitions and concepts of social capital are reviewed. Then, channels through which social capital influences economic growth are examined. It is worth mentioning that in the context of generalized neoclassical growth models, three of them for the effects of social capital on economic growth are presented in this paper. In an empirical examination the data on surveys of "Iranians' Values and Judgments", "Iranians' cultural behavior", the data of Statistic Center of Iran and The Central Bank of Islamic Republic of Iran are used. On the basis of models of economic growth and spatial econometrics, the effect of social capital on economic growth of Iran's provinces during the time period 1379-82 (2000-2003) are examined. Empirical results show that social capital has a significant effect on economic growth. In effect, one unit increase of social capital index will increase the economic growth by 0.18 percent.

Competition is an evolving and multilateral concept .This is why it has different explanations. In New Institutional Approach (NIA), ideal type of competition is that of explanation of competition via the supportive institutions of technology, institutions decreasing asymmetry of information and institutions internalizing of externalities. On the other hand, for two decades, Nelson-Winter model has been considered in the analyses of competition and firms behavior, because that is a critical approach to neoclassic school and compatible and consistent with the situation in developing countries and the definition of competition in NIA. The application of this definition of competition with the use of Nelson-Winter model for Methanol plants shows that to pay attention to the most important variables means investment routines in initiative and imitative (as the supportive institutions of technology and internalize institutions of externalities)and betterment of technology (as reducing institutions of asymmetric information), results in the improvement of firms' performance in using resources (especially capital) and this will decrease the exclusive power and concentration of industries and consequently will cause competition improvement.

Economic Cooperation Organization (ECG), based on regional and multicultural cooperation, has focused on the improvement of living standards, and economic development of member states. Since February 1992, ECO has increased to ten after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gas and oil are crucially important factors in this regard. ECO has followed its two major plans in the context of "Action Plan" and "Istanbul Declaration". Each of these documents has been an indication of overall goals of this organization since 2005. One of the most important goals of ECO members has been acceleration of economic growth by expanding regional trade. The main question of this paper is: "Has ECO been able to expand regional trade among member states?" The hypothesis of this paper is: ECO has failed to reach this goal. Proving this hypothesis makes the revision of ECO activities a necessary step.

There are different models which are used in analyzing energy demand. Some of them are designed only' for analyzing energy demand, while some others are not designed specifically for this purpose, but are used in the analyses. Structural and non-structural econometric models and end use models are the main models for analyzing energy demand. Model for Energy Demand Evaluation (MEDEE) is one of the famous end use models which are used only for analyzing energy demand. Stun linear expenditure system, trans log demand system, the constant elasticity demand system, Rotterdam demand system, almost ideal demand system, autoregressive process, moving average process, autoregressive moving average process, autoregressive integrated moving average process, vector autoregressive model and vector error correction models; are some of the famous structural and non-structural econometric models which are used in analyzing energy demand.In this paper, among the above models, vector error correction model (VECM) because of its unique characteristics has been used for dynamic analysis of energy demand in Iran. In this regard three separate models for studying demand for oil products, electricity and natural gas have been formulated. Using Eviews and Microfit software and time series of RGDP, real price of energy carriers and physical value of demand for energy carriers in 1959-2004, the formulated vector error correction model has been estimated. The Johansen method shows that there is one co integration vector between the variables entered in the models of demand for oil - products and electricity; but there is no dynamic long - run equilibrium relationship in the VECM of natural gas. In the VECM of oil products, all estimated coefficients are statistically significant, and the error correction term has the correct sign. In this model, the adjustment speed of deviation from the equilibrium relationship is slow. According to coefficients in the VECM of electricity, the long run price and income elasticity of demand for electricity are - 0.86 and 1.84, respectively. It is worth mentioning that in this research by short run we mean periods less than one year, and long run refers to periods more than one year until there will be no structural change in relations among variables.

One of the most important aspects of economic planning is to pay rightful attention to productivity of agricultural activities, including wheat farming. The aim of this paper is measuring and explaining the productivity in farming systems of wheat producers in Tehran province. For this propose, the productivity of labour force, machinery, nitrogenal and phosphoral fertilizers, water, seed and also total factors productivity (elementary, kenderik and divisia indexes) were measured by means of production function approach. In order to analyze and explain TFP, correlation and regression analysis were used. 240 wheat producers by means of stratification sampling were selected and interviewed. The results of the study reveals that, performance per area, sustainability of production unit, level of agricultural development in a region, area under wheat cultivation, farmer's experience, education level of his family, assists and technofarming knowledge of farmers were most important and effective factors on productivity of farming systems.

This paper argues oil price uncertainty effects on industrial, service and building sectors in Iranian economy. We discuss in detail the internal and external related research to conclude a model. The GARCH method is used to measure oil price uncertainty, and its effects on the Iranian economy sectors are estimated by OLS. All the estimated coefficients had their expected signs and oil price uncertainty effects on the Iranian economic sectors (industry, service and building) are negative. Research findings reveal that the policy makers should take oil price uncertainty into account to protect economic sectors against international shocks through oil price fluctuations.

Transportation section is one of the most important aspects of economic growth of a modem society which can be affected by that in return. The main purpose of this paper is assessing the role of transportation in economic growth of a country by analyzing the existing valid data. In this paper the co-integration with stationary variables have been accounted and analyzed. At this stage, firstly the co-integration variables of the model are known, and then, the structure of the model and the number of optimal orders are identified. The next step, however, determines the number of co-integration vectors of the model. Furthermore, the paper analyzes dynamic effects of different shocks of transportation sector on the economic growth, and the variance decomposition of GDP growth by VEC models.