فصلنامه پژوهش های اقتصادی ایران
پیاپی 61 (زمستان 1393)

The following paper investigates European policy about importing natural gas from Caspian Sea countries. The Nabucoo and Trans-Caspian gas project are the two potential projects. For these pipelines three countries are candidates: Iran, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. By using the game theory framework, coalition among natural gas exporters for the Nabucco Project has been considered. Iran, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan are three potential exporter countries. In this paper we answer the question whether three countries should enter the coalition for exporting gas to Europe or not. Moreover, we accounted bargaining power of these countries. We conclude that all countries have profits to make the coalition for gas exporting in the Nabucoo project. Iran has more bargaining power than others so Iran can play an important and active role for exporting gas to Europe in the Nabucco project.

The following paper investigates European policy about importing natural gas from Caspian Sea countries. The Nabucoo and Trans-Caspian gas project are the two potential projects. For these pipelines three countries are candidates: Iran, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. By using the game theory framework, coalition among natural gas exporters for the Nabucco Project has been considered. Iran, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan are three potential exporter countries. In this paper we answer the question whether three countries should enter the coalition for exporting gas to Europe or not. Moreover, we accounted bargaining power of these countries. We conclude that all countries have profits to make the coalition for gas exporting in the Nabucoo project. Iran has more bargaining power than others so Iran can play an important and active role for exporting gas to Europe in the Nabucco project.

The article is aimed at investigating the effect of the military budget expenditure share in GDP on the Iranian economic growth in the endogenous growth model framework. To meet this end, using the time-series data of Iran during 1988 to 2012 and the Auto-Regressive Distribution Lag Model, the effect of military budget expenditure share in GDP on economic growth has been studied. The results show an inverted U-shape relationship between economic growth and military budget expenditure share in GDP. Therefore, there is a proportion for military budget expenditure which maximizes the economic growth, which is 2.73 percent from GDP which is lower than (2.95 percent) the average proportion in the considered time period. As a result, it seems that the society can benefit from reallocating the resources to non-military budget expenditures such as education and health.

This paper has tried to apply Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) and Weighted Average Least Squares (WALS) approaches as methods of averaging in Bayesian econometrics in order to investigate the impact of 18 macroeconomic variables on Gini coefficient in Iran based on annual data from 1976 to 2010. The results of two approaches indicate that the growth rate of Gross domestic products is the most important determinant of the Gini coefficient, implying economic growth arising from oil booms leads to more unequal distribution of income. As regards to other variables, the results of BMA estimation indicate that second and third effective variables on Gini coefficient are respectively the ratio of government current expenditure to GDP and the ratio of oil revenue to GDP for which an increase in the ratios engenders inequality. Thus the distribution of oil rents and government expenditure is inconsistent with primary purposes of politicians to ameliorate income distribution. Also the results of WALS estimation rank openness and exchange rate as the most effective variables respectively with positive sign. Therefore economic liberalization moving along with oil revenue during the sample period, has been against the favor of lower income groups. According to aforementioned results, it is necessary to revise economic growth policies to the benefit of low-income groups of people. In addition, renovation of budgeting process and allocation of resources with aim to reduce rent-seeking opportunities and more privileges for low-income groups must be considered by policy makers.

In the presentstudy,the evaluation of different economic factors’ impact on income inequality in Iran has been considered during the period 1363-1390. In order to achieve this, Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag method is used. The results indicate that the rate ofeconomic growth and inflation rate havenegative influence and income tax, labour productivity and gas and oil revenue has a positive influence on income equality.Also based on the results, it can be stated that the relationship between economic growth and income distribution confims Kuznets and Kaldor’s view. The structural stability tests indicate the estimated model is stable. In addition, according to calculated elasticities, it can be concluded that revenue fromincome tax has had the most effect on reducing incomeinequality in Iran during the mentioned period.

Many economists insist that the financial market is a key factor in economic growth due to the role of financial markets in financing and capital formation in different countries. With the development of endogenous growth models in recent decades, researchers pay more attention to the relation between financial markets and economic growth. In this study, the empirical relationship between Foreign Direct Investment in dealing with financial development on economic growth investigated in 25 Islamic countries over the period 1990 to 2012 using Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). The results show that the interaction between foreign direct investment and market-based indicators of financial development causes economic growth.