فصلنامه پژوهش های رشد و توسعه اقتصادی
پیاپی 21 (زمستان 1394)

This study uses data from the eight largest Islamic countries known as D-8 for the period 2000 to 2013 concerns to assess the effect of tourism، energy consumption and political instability on economic growth. To address the objective of this study، we utilize both the static panel data approach as well as the dynamic generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator to examine the impact of candidate variables. Our results show that energy consumption and tourism significantly contribute to the economic growth of countries in the D-8 region. Hence، our study lends some support to the existence of the tourism-led growth and energy-led growth hypotheses in the region. In line with our expectation، our estimation results also reveal that political instability impedes the process of economic growth and development in the D-8 countries. There fore، it should be take serious action in these countries to overcome political instability and attract international tourists to boost economic growth. Since energy consumption has the greatest impact on economic growth in member countries، policies that reduce energy consumption without planning to support the growth of the manufacturing sector in these countries، will have disturbing impact on economic growth.

Export as the engine of economic growth plays a key role in the global economy and is considered as the survival factor of countries in the global markets. Investigation of modern international trade models to identify the effective factors in the international trade is necessary for the expansion of global trade. In the present article, using the gravity model and panel data, the researchers examined the factors affecting Iran's export during the period of 2000- 2012. The countries under study were classified into two groups based on their geography and their level of development. The results of the estimated models with the dynamic ordinary least squares approach (DOLS) showed that Iran's export could be explained by the significant portion of factors included in the gravity model. Furthermore, the results are different with respect to geography and their level of development of business partners. The findings can potentially and practically pave the way for the important implications to design the trade policies and are of use to the authorities in Iran.

In the world movement toward sustainable development, it is necessary to consider environmental damages caused by energy sector. Determining the influence of different factors on the environment pollution theoretically, practically and politically is necessary for economic growth, which is in accordance with sustainable development objectives. Hence, in this article, we are going to study the factors influenced Iranian environment pollution (Socio-economic view and Climatic Parameters view) using the data of the years 1974-2013. In order to study the relation between the variables, we have used GMM methodology. According to the study results, the impact of economic growth, density, energy consumption and the number of automobiles on environment pollution is positive and significant. Nevertheless, the degree of the country openness, temperature and rainfall have a negative and significant relation with environment pollution.

This paper investigates the monetary policy reaction of the Central Bank of Iran with threshold effects. The estimation of the nonlinear reaction function is carried out using a two-step procedure. At first step of this procedure, we follow Caner and Hansen's (2004) threshold approach. Using the Taylor empirical rules and threshold variables including inflation and output gap we estimate the relevant threshold values. Then, to infer the monetary policy preferences, we employ these threshold values to estimate the asymmetric policy reaction function specified by Favero and Rovelli (2003) and Komlan(2013).This is done by Generalized Method of Moment (GMM). Experimental results show that the asymmetry parameter of the output gap is statistically significant. Thus, the Central Bank reacts more vigorously to negative than to positive output gaps. Also, the results suggest that Central Bank reacts only when the inflation rate is higher than the threshold. This fact indicates that the monetary authorities seek to improve the output and employment, and the priority of controling inflation rate is not considered during the study period.

On the one hand, D-8 countries due to their membership in the WTO, are considered as a competitor in the field of world trade, but on the other hand as an opportunity to transfer capital and technology for Iran. Because of this, the current study based on relevant conventional indices from various aspects dealt with assessment of trade capacities between Iran and other D-8 countries. The cosine measure showed that the degree of the similarity and complementary of Iran’s bilateral trade with Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia is high. Iran has also exporting high degree of the similarity with Pakistan's imports. In contrast, Egypt and Iran have the lowest potential for business development. Also, based on calculations of commercial potential; Iran has high bilateral trade capacity with Turkey, Indonesia and Malaysia and has high export potential with Pakistan. On the other hand, Iran is the only country with a high importing capacity with Bangladesh. Also, based on revealed comparative advantage index, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, Bangladesh and Nigeria are the first to the eighth rank of comparative exports advantage in terms of variety of commodity groups. Results of the Drysdale index is also indicate the possibility of trade development between Iran, Indonesia and Pakistan.

The subject of this paper is measuring institutional quality and evaluatingits relationship with per capita economic growth in 20 MENA countries. For estimating growth models, panel data method was used during (2002-2010). For measuring institutional quality at first six indices of good governance have been used in six growth models. The results have shown that only regulatory quality have positive and significant relation with economic growth. Whereas the coefficients of other institutional variables including control of corruption and political stability are negative and the others including rule of law, governance effectiveness and voice and accountability are positive but insignificant. Then another model was estimated by using good governance index which was derived from combining six upper indices by using principle component analysis (PCA). The results showed positive relationship but significant at the 0.10 percent level. In the final analysis a new institutional index is derived by combining three institutional variables which had positive coefficient into the one composite index by using PCA. New index has bigger positive coefficient and significant at the 0.01 percent level rather than its sub measures (regulatory quality, voice and accountability, rule of law) and alsothan good governance index.

In the VAT Acts in order to control gasoline consumption as one of the environment- polluting and also to earn revenue resources for environment protection, higher tax rate than the standard rate is levied on its consumption. In this paper, forecasting income receivable from the tax base using the two-stage approach has been considered. In the first stage, tax base (gasoline consumption expenditure) has been forecasted in the period 2013 to 2016 and then gasoline consumption tax, using multiplying the tax rates in gasoline consumption expenditure predicted, has been calculated for the mentioned period. In this regard, for precise prediction of the tax revenue, supervised neural networks method and for networks training, error back-propagation algorithm are used. The results indicate that during the mentioned period gasoline price changes (as the most effective variable) arising from VAT will have no serious impact on gasoline consumption. Also, VAT revenue of gasoline consumption will increase by an average annual rate of 35 %.