javad taherpoor

COVID-19 emerged in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, and the new coronavirus quickly spread across the globe. The COVID-19 epidemic wreaked havoc on the economy and put people’s lives and health at risk. The effect of COVID-19 on the labor market was characterized by a growing unemployment rate in many economies, which deteriorated the employment prospects of millions of people, especially women. This study aims to examine the impact of COVID-19 on female unemployment relative to male unemployment in the Iranian economy using the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model. Although both male and female workers have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, our findings indicate that women have been more severely affected by COVID-19. In other words, women lost their jobs more quickly and for longer durations than men. Our findings show that because of the COVID-19 outbreak in Iran, female workers were more likely to be hurt and harmed than males. The impact of this shock on the labor market can be mitigated by policies such as banking system credits, unemployment insurance, tax exemptions for unemployed women, and the use of technology to promote remote working for female workers.

In recent years, a group of researchers have shown that not only the quantitative growth of exports, but also its diversity can affect energy demand. On the one hand, export diversification can replace energy-efficient products and services with energy-intensive products, and on the other hand, it can lead to an increase in industrial production; Therefore, in the present study, the non-linear effect of export diversity on the energy demand of OPEC member countries was investigated using fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) long-term regression models, during the period of 2004-2019. The results of the study show that increasing export diversity increases energy demand. In addition, the non-linear U-shaped relationship between export diversity and energy demand was confirmed in this study, and also, the coefficients obtained for oil prices are negative and significant and for real GDP, natural resource rent, urbanization and population are positive and significant.

The importance of monetary and fiscal policy coordination, in view of the financial crises of recent decades, has increased more and this has led countries to adopt coherent and coordinated policy combinations to deal with the adverse effects of crises on the economy. To examine the situation of coordination and interaction between monetary and fiscal policy in Iran we use a time-varying parameter VARMA model with stochastic volatility. Following Klime et al. (2016) which is based on Sargent and Surico (2011), we drive law-frequency relationship between inflation and government fiscal stance which reflects a time-varying indicator of the interaction and coordination of monetary and fiscal policy, because if the monetary and fiscal policy is coordinated, the relationship between inflation and the government's financial situation will be low. The results show different monetary and fiscal policy interactions during different presidential era. The highest level of coordination between the two policymakers occurred in the final years of the second term of the presidency. However, in the third term of the presidency, the level of interaction between the two policymakers increased. Finally, in the last years of this period, the two policymakers have moved towards coordination, and this trend has continued in the next presidential period, and the least turmoil in this coordination has occurred in the last period.

During the coronavirus outbreak, Iranian government imposed social distancing and lockdown measures to reduce the number of infections. These policies caused economic activities disruption and the services are the most impacted, due to their need for human interactions. In this study, the economic growth modeling is used to investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on total output, considering the effect of the sanctions. Also, the impact of coronavirus on the service sector is compared with other sectors. The study period is spring 2005 to winter 2021. The empirical results from the ARDL estimates shows the negative impact of coronavirus pandemic on gross domestic product. Furthermore, the estimation results revealed significant negative effect of COVID-19 outbreak on service sector, but the impacts on agriculture and industry sectors are not statistically meaningful.

The aim of this study is to investigate the impacts of the coronavirus outbreak on Iran’s labor market. To do so, we analyzed changes in key indicators of the labor market in the first four months of the outbreak. In addition, the dynamic effects of COVID-19 are estimated using a vector autoregression model (VAR). Results show that spread of the pandemic has led to an increase innumber of discouraged workers. The participation rate has fallen by 3.7 percentage points, compared to the same period last year. Considering seasonal variations in the labor market, nearly 1.5 million people have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus contagion. Also, around 750 thousand people applied for unemployment benefits which are 60 percent of the claims filed by former service sector employees. The results indicate that during the study period, the increase in confirmed cases of infections increased the number of jobless claims and the number of unemployed persons. Our findings confirm rapid and substantial changes in the Iranian labor market caused by the coronavirus and highlight the necessity of improving the social welfare system for supporting vulnerable groups in the current crisis and future crises. Supporting businesses, especially credit, insurance, etc., can also reduce the problems of businesses and reduce the number of unemployed.

Many governments face a trade-off between health and economy during the coronavirus pandemic. Social distancing and lockdown caused decline in gross domestic product of coronavirus affected countries. In this study, by using the input-output table of 2011, the hypothetical extraction method is used to extract 10 selected economic activities hypothetically from economic system and examine the direct and indirect effect of this extraction on Iran’s gross output. Results show that extraction of passenger transport, aviculture and clothing sectors result in the greatest reductions in gross domestic product. Furthermore, extraction of accommodation services, travel agency and tour operator activities and foodservice industry as representative of the tourism sector is able to reduce total output by almost one percent. Considering these ten selected sectors, 6.5 percent of Iran’s total economic output would be impacted by coronavirus outbreak.

This paper discusses the impact of sanctions imposed by the US, the UN Security Council and the European Union on the lranian industrial technological changes. In this regard, at first, the sanctions imposed by the above three on six common fields (energy, banking affairs, petrochemicals, insurance, shipping and transportation) are being partly extracted in terms of quantity by the use of Principle Component Analysis approach. Then, by contribution of the data and statistics relevant to the estate industry 2_digit lSlC code and adding the sanctions variable, we estimate the model of this study by the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). The result demonstrates that based on the existing data, on the one hand, imposing these sanctions has increased the benefit of the whole production of nonmetal mineral industries (26) and official and accounting machineries (30) and, on the other hand, sanctions' influence has a reversed result on technological changes of the production of tobacco and cigarette (16) and vehicles, trailers and mini trailers (34).

With the outbreak of coronavirus, due to their high dependence on oil revenues, oil-exporting countries such as Iran have been affected by lower oil prices and have faced budget deficits. In order to investigate the effect of coronavirus outbreak on government budget in Iranian economy, the method of scenario analysis using Schwartz method and structural analysis (MICMAC Software) is used. In this study two key variables, "oil price" and "coronavirus outbreak" were identified and four scenarios were designed based in these variables. Our results show that with increase in oil prices (the first variable in scenarios 1 and 4), the government can be almost near its revenue targets in 2020 fiscal year. However, in scenario 1, the outbreak of coronavirus is assumed, in which case, the increase in relief expenditures and a sharp decline in tax revenues, due to business failures, can increase budget deficit to about 78.89 thousand billion tomans. However, in scenario 4, in which it is assumed that the spread of coronavirus is controlled, a sharp decline in tax revenues and an increase in relief expenditures is ruled out. In that case, it is estimated that government budget deficit would be about 64.85 thousand billion tomans. In scenarios 2 and 3, when oil prices fall, government foreign earnings fall, but if this decline is accompanied by the outbreak of coronavirus (scenario 2), it can significantly increase budget deficit (to about 83.49 thousand trillion tomans). In Scenario 3, however, part of this budget deficit is reduced due to lack of relief expenditures as a result of coronavirus control. It is suggested that the government should put on agenda a regular sale of debt securities, increase productivity of its assets and sell its share in listed and non-listed companies to reduce budget deficit.

In some economic theories emphasizing the positive relationship between financial and real sector development in economy, privatization of financial markets and institutions and increasing private sector share is the dominant approach to financial development. However, private banks performance in some countries have shown different results compared to the goals had been set. Lack of proper economic and institutional environment has led to adverse results of private banks. Considering mentioned issues, this study aims to assess the impact of private banking on the economic growth rate in Iran based on the seasonal data form 2003 till 2018 using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique. Results of the study have shown that financial development has a positive impact on the growth rate of economy, while, as the market share of private banks has increased, it had a negative effect on the economic growth. The main cause of this negative relationship is undesirable institutional environment which private banks are working in. Therefore, preparing suitable institutional framework is a condition to gain the private banks’ advantages. Central bank constant supervision alongside the enforcement authority prohibiting private banks from managing economic firms and the presence in the alternative markets are the main preconditions.

The pattern of comments from commercial political cycles aim at scrutinizing voters and government behavior. As the studied in this field based on opportunistic approach indicate that politicians try to attract voters through manipulating financial policies at times prior to the election in order to increase their winning chances. Among the campaigning tools available to candidates, construction and development budgets is a good option, since incumbents' opportunistic incentives before election direct budgets to more tangible activities such as, constructing bridges, roads, etc. In this study, in order to study elections (presidency and congressional) on construction and development budgets, we have used statistical data of all 28 states during 1999- 2016 through GMM method. Results show that, according to the opportunistic approach during the congressional election and presidential elections years, construction and development budgets have increased (per capita).

This paper models the assets and liabilities of the Social Security Fund in Iran. The fund's financial position in practice is influenced by the population dynamics between two generations of employed and retired people, focusing on four important characteristics: the premium rate and pension benefits of the working and retired generation, the two-generation employed and retired population pyramid, the employment generation period and the retirement period. In this study, an overlapping generation model is designed to show the dependence of the stability of the fund on the generational population and the transitions between generations taking into account such characteristics. The simulation results show that although the ratio of assets to liabilities can be potentially high, the gap between assets and liabilities of the fund is so high that any of the proposed policies alone cannot close the gap and ensure its stability. Therefore, policy implication s to stabilize the fund's assets and liabilities can be proposed in two scenarios. The similarity of both scenarios is that the government first pays its share of the insurance and secondly increases the premium rate to 10%, with the retirement pension being reduced by 50% in the first scenario and 10% in the second scenario. The results of the analysis show that the improvement of the fund stabilization is mainly dependent on the decrease in retirement pension, which can be stabilized in a certain time horizon.

The excessive increase in government spending could lead to instability in economic variables, one of most important of which is price level. But the important question is whether the increasing in government spending have symmetric effects in different situations or not, especially in recession and booms. According to this discussion, the purpose of this study is to investigate the asymmetric effects of fiscal policy shocks on price levels by using seasonal data from 1988 to 2014. In this regard, first, the effects of fiscal policy shocks on price levels are essayed by the SVAR model, and then for investigating asymmetric effects of fiscal policy shocks, we applied the TVAR model. The results from SVAR model indicates that shocks from government spending and tax revenue have positive and negative effect on price level, respectively. On the other hand, results of TVAR model shows that effect of fiscal shocks is asymmetric with respect to the position of business cycles, so that a positive shock from government spending during a boom has a more positive and severe effect on price levels, but during the recession, this effect is less severe. On the other hand, a positive shock from government tax revenues has a negative effect on price levels in both the downturn and the boom, but it is more severe in terms of the impact of the shock on the boom than in the downturn.

According to released official statistics of greenhouse gas emissions in 2010, CO2, which is produced by fossil fuels and industrial processes, accounts for 65 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions. The transport sector, in turn, is responsible for 23% of CO2 emissions. Researchers have been claiming that car manufacturers have not made significant efforts to reduce the pollution levels of their products, due significant government support policies, especially high tariff rates. It is also known that many developing countries impose high tariffs on car imports. In order to investigate the effect of tariffs on vehicle emissions, this paper analyzes the impact of vehicle tariffs on CO2 emissions of cars  in a panel of 20 selected car importing countries during the years 2005-2013. The results indicate that increased vehicle tariff protection in the selected countries has led to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. The China-South Korean policy model of tariff cuts, combined with environmentally supportive policies can be a good example for Iranian policymakers.

Affecting economy of countries due to outside oil, monetary and fiscal shocks was considered as origin of emerging the issue of economic vulnerability and resilience in the economic literature. Economic resilience and vulnerability can be considered as an environment for activities of economic factors and a determinant of economic growth. Here, the raised question is that whether the degree of different vulnerability and resilience can explain difference in per capita income in oil producer countries that are always exposed in oil shocks. According to this issue, the present research has studied the effects of economic resiliency and vulnerability of 18 oil producer countries on their per capita income using the GMM method for the time period of 2005-2014. The research results showed that per capita income difference can be related with economic degree of vulnerability of countries, even among oil producing countries that are exposed on oil shocks. As expected, resilience has a positive effect on per capita income of countries. This means that countries with higher resilience have experienced a higher per capita income. Coefficients of economic vulnerability index have been negative and significant, which is consistent with theoretical bases completely and shows that countries with lower vulnerability have higher per capita income.

In interest-free banking system, banks sources distribution happens through the formation of exchanging and participatory of two contract groups. Regarding to different mentioned contracts profit rates and different refund periods and also the position of every one for various activities, facilities distribution in favor of every one can have different impressions on economic growth. This article has investigated the banking facilities distribution with emphasis on exchanging & incorporating contracts on economic growth in Iran. For this purpose, we have utilized 1985-2015 time series and Autoregressive distributed lag. Results show that the emphatic variables coefficient in short term and long one are obtained meaningful and according to the expectation. Logarithmic coefficient financial expanding index in short term with one & three intervals, in long term has been obtained positive and meaningful, that is illustrative of financial expansion positive role in economic growth. In contract, the banking facilities distribution index coefficient (exchanging to incorporative) has been obtained positive and meaningful in short & long terms that represents the positive exchanging contracts on economic growth, in effect, since the exchanging contracts benefit rates are lower and their refund period is longer than incorporative ones and in another situation these contracts are used in productive activities (in comparison to unproductive ones), facilities distribution in favor of these contracts has positive effect on growth.

In Economic literature, different dimensions of financial development have been scrutinized. In this regard, what is important about bank-based financial systems is the distribution of loans and credits among different economic sectors. Actually, in non-competitive markets characterized by imperfect and incomplete information, any sort of distribution of credits and loans which is based on profit maximization for banks will not necessarily result in maximizing the collective interests of a country and it can even have adverse effects for the whole society. With regard to the issue described, this paper aims to study the role of distribution of credits and loans among different sectors on economic growth in Iran. To achieve this goal, we have used and analyzed time series data for the period 1984 to 2015 using Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL). The findings of this paper show that the logarithmic coefficient of financial growth index (calculated as the ratio of total outstanding credits to GDP) is positive and significant in both short-term and long-term periods. This means that financial development plays a positive role in economic growth. On the other hand, the estimated coefficient for the ratio of loans allocated to production sectors to loans allocated to non-production sectors is also positive and significant in both short-term and long-term periods. This suggests that loans allocated to production sectors have a positive effect on economic growth. In fact, one can assert that although an increase in bank loans and credits (actually, the ratio of total outstanding loans and credits to GDP) has a positive effect on economic growth, the more these loans and credits are inclined towards production, the more the magnitude of economic growth being stimulated.

Economic vulnerability shows the exposure of the economy to exogenous shocks and deviations from the path of growth and development. On the other hand, the resilience of the economy is the ability to recover the mentioned path of growth and development. Therefore, these two factors determine the level of welfare of the economy. Since the production factor productivity is the most important variables in determining the level of welfare of the economy, it is important to be measured the taking effect of the economic productivity from economic vulnerability and resilience. Therefore, in the this study, with employing the Panel GMM method for the period 2005-2014 and for eighteen oil-rich countries, the impact of economic vulnerability and resilience on labor productivity has been considered. The results of this study show that economic resilience has the significant and positive effect while the economic vulnerability has the significant and negative effect on the productivity of labor factor of production. Oil-rich countries, especially Iran, should be focused on reducing their economic vulnerability. To reduce economic vulnerability, shifting from single-product economy to export-diversified economy and reduce dependence on strategic goods will be suggested. To improve economic resilience, focusing on macroeconomic stability, improving institutional quality, improving the structure of markets, and improving human capital will be recommended. It is clear that these policy-induced recommendations would be so hard, but failing to achieve them, it leads to the bitter experiences such as decline in oil revenues, especially the sanction conditions.

Given the importance and role ofICTin enhancing people’s abilities and skills, studying the households expenditures on ICT products is important.The present paper identifies theICTrelated items in households’ budget by comparing different categories of products. We calculate the households’ spending on ICT indifferent income deciles for the rural and urban household in Iran for the period 2004-2015. The results show that there is a significant gap on level of ICT spendingand their share in household consumption basket between rural and urban families. In addition, there is a significant gap on level and share of ICT spendingbetween low-income and high-income deciles. It is also observed that after emergence of an inflationary era in mid-2000s and a stagnation period in theearly 2010s, the share of ICT spendingin family budgets has declined. Given the nature of ability-enhancement of ICT products and their role in income distribution and sustained growth and development, it is necessary for the policy-makers to pay attention to the gap between deciles and between rural and urban families and also to the recent decline of share of ICT spending.

The exogenous economic shocks cause countries with a higher degree of vulnerability to be more influenced by them and be less able to reduce the negative effects of such shocks because in most cases, they are beyond control of countries. In contrast, countries with a high level of resilience can repair and reconstruct their economy after facing such economic shocks. In this regard and by considering economic exogenous shocks, especially oil price shocks on economy of oil-dependent countries that are mostly beyond their control, identifying the level of economic resilience and vulnerability in these countries has a considerable importance.
In the present research, there were calculated and extracted resilience and vulnerability indices for the selected oil countries from 2005 to 2012 using the indicators introduced by Brigoglio et al. The results showed that in 2012 economy of Iran, compared to some countries in the Persian Gulf region, had a better performance in terms of economic vulnerability index (a lower level of vulnerability); but in terms of resilience, it is at lower level in comparison with majority of the selected oil-dependent countries: in terms of economic resilience, Iran is in 16th place among 18 selected countries. Based on this indicator, Canada and Venezuela have the most and the least resilience respectively. In vulnerability index, Iran is in 12th place among 18 selected countries. Such a situation in areas of vulnerability and resilience indicates high vulnerability potential of the country against external shocks. By comparing the performance of different countries in areas of resilience and vulnerability we can say that oil income cannot be blamed as the sole reason of low resilience and high vulnerability. It is actually the style and method of management of different sectors of countries, especially management of oil incomes, that determines the level of their resilience and vulnerability. This issue requires special attention of economic and non-economic officials and politicians to resilience and vulnerability of the country.

The strategy of using oil income to achieve economic growth and development in rentier economies can have devastating effects on the scientific field in the long-run. Pursuing the strategy of “injecting oil income” ultimately sends signals to players in the scientific field which encourages them to follow the path of “expanding low-quality education”. Based on the analytical framework presented in this study, domination of a rentier environment in an economy leads to establishment of a rent-seeking incentive structure. In this situation, on the one hand, the priorities of firms in production sector are changed and reaching some parts of benefits in oil sector of the economy becomes the basis of profit-maximizing of firms and these firms find themselves not dependent on science and knowledge. On the other hand, based on oil income, government finds itself needless of science and knowledge to promote its own financial and managerial capacities. In addition, the government uses the injection of oil income to achieve scientific development, which application of this method makes education system needless of financing through other sectors of the economy. The set of these consequences at last leads the education system towards the path of prioritizing quantity and disregarding quality in its activities. Available data regarding the quantity and quality of efforts in Iranian education system, including number of patents and innovations, number of academic articles and the sources of financing in education system verifies the theoretical framework presented in this paper.

In this study, by employing a flexible cost function we calculate the technological change measure and total factor productivity and examine the impact of technology on the combination of input and scale of production in Iranian manufacturing industries. According to the results of technological change at the average data level, total production cost of industry has decreased by an amount of 0.49 percent during the period 1996-2009. All 23 studied industries have deviation from input technology. In addition, technological change has led to saving in raw materials and to an increase in the use of three inputs of labor, capital and energy. The technological change is non-neutral and has led to changes in production scale and based on the technology scale bias, technological change has led to a decrease in optimal production scale.

During last two decades, studies in the area of political economy focused more on how the political structure of a country can influence economic outcomes. It is reasoned that the higher the degree of political competition, the more the likelihood of implementing mature policies and parliament can do better its role to control and monitor the government and this has a positive impact on economic growth. On the other hand, when the degree of political competition decreases, the parliament either aligns with the government or confronts it, which in both cases the probability of implementing efficient and pro-growth policies will decrease. In this study, we examine the effect of political competition on economic growth. Accordingly, the alignment between the parliamentary and presidential political party was considered as a measure of the presence of the political parties and political competition and it is entered in an economic growth model alongside other variables. Estimation of the model during years 1988-2014 showed that alignment of legislative and executive branches has a negative relationship with economic growth or more clearly, the decline in political competition has had a negative effect on economic growth.

The main objective of this paper is to measure technical deficiency as well as identifying its effective determinants in 23 active industries at 2-digit level ISIC codes during the period 1995-2009. The paper has applied the technical deficiency criterion based on the Collie and Batis approach using the Translog production function in the industries. The findings indicate that the Iranian manufacturing industries have experienced an increasing trend for efficiency so as we have found an increase in the technical efficiency coefficient for all the manufacturing industries in the investigated period. The highest level of technical deficiency is observed in the following industries: production of garment and production and dying of fur; publishing, printing and copying of recorded media; manufacturing of textiles; and recycling. On the other hand, the highest level of technical efficiency is found in the manufacturing of chemicals and chemical products. The results show that the average value of technical deficiency is equal to 0.47. Also it is found that the more the concentration coefficient, the greater the level of deficiency. In other words, the industries with more concentrated structure have had more deficiency. Given the model, in the industries that have a larger coefficient for skilled workforce and benefit from the economies of scale, the level of deficiency has reduced. The findings also demonstrate that the expenditures for the research and development have not had a statistically significant effect on the deficiency decrease in the industries.

The issue of the impact of oil revenues on the economic performance of the countries that own these incomes is a significant part of the economic literature. One of the main reasons for the poor performance of resource-rich countries is the incidence of “Dutch Disease” in these countries. Considering this issue, after we review the literature on Dutch Disease, we first focus on the occurrence of Dutch Disease in Iranian economy and in the next stage, we study the effects of this problem on economic growth. To see if the problem of Dutch Disease has happened in Iranian economy or not, we have studied the production share of different tradable sectors (industry and agriculture) and nontradable sectors (services and housing) and to study the effects of Dutch Disease on economic growth, we have used the growth models related to this research area and we have estimated these models by applying Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method with Withe correction. The results of our study show that the Dutch Disease has happened in Iranian economy along with the increase in oil incomes, especially in 1970s and 2000s, and also the occurrence of Dutch Disease has had a negative effect on economic growth in Iranian economy.