مجله سیاست گذاری اقتصادی
سال یکم شماره 1 (بهار و تابستان 1388)

The main goal of this paper is to investigate the causality between tourism development and economic growth in Iran. For this purpose, a Vector Auto-Regressive (VAR) model, Response Function and Granger Causality test during the 1961-2005 period are used. The variables used in this paper consist of: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as an index for camputing the economic growth and number of tourists arrival to Iran as an index for tourism development. The results show that these variables have a significant effect on each other and the hypothesis of reinforcing economic growth by tourism development and vice-versa is strongly approved.

This paper argues productivity growth in Iran’s services sector: issues and measures. Services sectors comprise about 50 percent of GDP and employment in the economy of Iran. For sustainable development of Iran’s service companies, it is important for organizations to deliver services and broaden their examination of productivity from the conventional organization-oriented perspective to a dual organization–customer perspective. Productivity shows whether the activity of an organization is efficient and effective or not. The quality aspect in manufacturing is not gauged because input and output are measured by quantity units and quality remains the same. The quality in service sector is also very important. Service sector input elements such as materials, machines and energy are not as important as in manufacturing input. The main element in service sector is labor because service sector is more personnel-intensive comparing to manufacturing. Furthermore, in determining productivity of service sector, we must evaluate output and input elements in quantity and quality. Quality of service sector is analyzed in humanistic and technical aspects. Therefore, output consists of a total service offered in terms of quality, and the input includes both tangible and intangible elements.The analysis of data shows that the productivity in service sector is low as compared to the other economic sectors in Iran. In this context, it is needed to know the productivity increasing limitations in the Iranian service sector and how we can deal with them. To achieve this, productivity analysis is done by using DEA approach.

Iran usually claims to have comparative advantage in horticultural products. This study examines this hypothesis on horticultural activity of Azarbayejan province for apple production in selected cities; Oroumiah, Khoy and Salmas at the West Azarbayejan province. It provides a theoretical framework for the analysis of the comparative advantage formulated Location Quotient. Hence a part of study is to determine the employment status of horticultural sector in selected cities of the Azarbayejan province during 2001, 2002 and 2003.Thus, by applying LQ index, the apple product has comparative advantage on the basis of LQ measurement except Khoy. The results also show that among these selected cities Oroumiah is exporting labours, therefore, has comparative advantage in horticultural production. So, this sector is expected to play an important role in the future of the region.

This article studies the possibility and priority of establishing energy-intensive industries in Boushehr province with regard to the recent development and the potentials of the areas for energy-oil and gas.To do so, a set of economic and environment indices in different scenarios based on a computational model of Taxonomy are used. The results represent that Boushehr Province is a rich region among other provinces in Iran in terms of establishing Energy-intensive industries. It also suggest the possibility of establishing many energy-intensive industries including non-metal mineral industries (particularly cement and glasses), metal, chemical and wood industries in different parts of the Province.