Identification of Stagflation Causes in Iran: A Threshold Error Correction Method

Stagflation is an economic situation in which both inflation and business activities stagnant will happen at the same time with the increase of unemployment rate in the country. In this study, the causes of stagflation will be identified in the country by Error Correction Method (ECM) and the data of the years 1973-2011. Then, by using Threshold Autoregressive Error Correction Method (TAR-ECM), the researchers try to clear that if the growth of the elements identified will equally affect the stagflation or after a threshold level, the effect can be different. According to the results of linear relationship, indices of payment balances, budget deficit, oil revenues and liquidity are statistically significant and considered as the cause of stagflation in Iran. Also, the results of all nonlinear models estimated in this paper represent when the growth of stagflation causes passed the threshold point, their effect on stagflation will be different.