Investigating the effect of expanding the degree of trade openness of the agricultural sector on rural unemployment in Iran

The experience of many countries in the world shows that expanding the degree of trade openness through increasing access to international markets has brought acceleration of economic growth and prosperity of employment in urban and rural areas. In this study, the effect of trade openness of the agricultural sector on rural unemployment in Iran was evaluated. For this purpose, the annual time series statistics of 1986-2018 and the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach were used. The results showed that in the short-term, increasing the degree of trade openness of the agricultural sector will reduce the rate of rural unemployment in the country. Nevertheless, in long-term periods, increasing the degree of trade openness of the agricultural sector will increase the amount of rural unemployment in Iran. The results also showed that in the short and long-term, with the increase in the growth of the GDP of the agricultural sector, the amount of rural unemployment in Iran will decrease. Also, by reducing the degree of dryness of the environment in the short and long-term, unemployment in rural areas will be reduced. Nevertheless, the growth of rural population does not show a significant effect on the increase of rural unemployment in the country. Finally, in order to reduce rural unemployment in the country, it was suggested to continue and increase the payment of employment creation and investment facilities in the agricultural sector with the aim of increasing the penetration of user jobs in rural areas, especially in long-term periods.