Clustering of regional countries in terms of GDP per capita time series trend over the period of 1990-2014 with ICA Technique

The Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran in horizon of 2026 has been designed for achieving the first place in economy, science and technology between regional countries. This purpose can be achieved by relative improvement in the level of GDP. In this paper, using clustering method, the position of Iran among regional countries has been evaluated in terms of GDP per capita and trend of this indicator over a 25 year period (between 1990-2014). For a more precise clustering, the Independent component analysis technique has been implemented as a preprocess. The results indicate that regional countries, in terms of GDP per capita in 2014, can be classified into 4 clusters in which Iran is in the same cluster as Jordan, Iraq, Armenia, Georgia, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Syria, Yemen, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Lebanon, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. The study also shows that the regional countries can be classified into 9 clusters in terms of GDP per capita time series trend between 1990 to 2014. Based on this criterion, Iran shares the same cluster with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Turkey. Considering the significant difference between Iran and countries such as Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Oman in terms of the GDP per capita, Iran should have grown much faster in recent years. However, this has not been observed according to the clustering results. To achieve the goals of vision in the remaining years, a significant positive change in time series trend of GDP per capita should occur. In such a way, the gap between Iran and other countries can be narrowed and Iran can earned the first place in the region by the end of the vision.