Investigating the Relationship between Credit Cycles and Business Cycles in Iranian Economy

Macroeconomic policy makers and planners always use different tools to achieve economic goals. Credit control is one of these tools. The boom and recession of the financial sector of the economy are called the credit cycle, and of the real sector is called the business cycle. Credit as a complementary input for capital, intermediate goods, and primitive materials can be effective in improving business cycles. This study, by employing Structural Vector Auto Regressive (SVAR) model and using the annual data of Iran during 1973 to 2016, investigates the relationship between credit cycles and business cycles in Iranian economy. The results show that credit cycle has positive effect on business cycle, but business cycle has negative effect on credit cycle. Credit cycle fluctuations have the largest share in explaining the business cycle fluctuations, but business cycle ranks the fourth in explaining the credit cycle fluctuations following own variable, inflation rate and consumption shocks. The investigation of the co-movement between the credit cycle and the business cycle also show that the effect of the credit cycle on the business cycle is revealed from the second period and there is 24 years of co-movement between these cycles. Also, the persistence of the co-movement between these cycles in expansion - improvement phases has causes severe financial crises in the Iranian economy in the long run.