The effect of terms of trade and its volatility on economic growth in Iran

Terms of trade is one of the important and effective variables in the economy of all countries, and especially in the developing countries. Terms of trade shows the purchasing power of exports of a country. Therefore, the study of terms of trade and its volatility is very important in the economy of a country. In this study, by using the method of Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and the data for years of 1975-2009, the effect of terms of trade, its volatility and components on the economic growth of Iran has been estimated. The volatility of terms of trade has been estimated using the method of Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity. The results of this study show that the effect of terms of trade on economic growth in Iran is positive and significant, but its volatility has negative and significant effect. Also, the results show that export real price index has positive and significant effect, but import real price index and export real price index volatility have negative and significant effect on the economic growth in Iran.