مجله اقتصاد و توسعه منطقه ای
پیاپی 17 (بهار و تابستان 1398)

That inequality in the allocation of material resources by governments across regions, other than marginalizing distributive justice, causes many social and economic problems that create other abnormalities in society. Among the abnormalities that could be due to the lack of balanced development are the emergence and increase of poverty, unemployment, infrastructure and service failures, environmental threats, and demographic misconceptions (Rafeeian, 2012:2). The main goals and objectives of the present paper are to rank the provinces based on development and allocation of funds aspects in the third to eleventh governments, measurement and separation of three budgets; total, developmental, current (volume of government) in the development of regions. Therefore, to policymaking in the direction of regional equilibrium, the effects of each will be obtained in the form of regression models and also, it will be determined which provinces have been able to develop further due to the relative share of the budget (budget efficiency in development). It is possible to achieve this by adjusting the allocation budgets of the provinces in order to regulate balanced development in the regions. Among the other factors studied in the current paper are the application of regional planning model and effective management approach in regional development. For developed and undeveloped provinces, efficient management is more important for allocating budgets.

The present paper was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, the available data for the variables studied were collected in the statistical journal. After sorting and categorizing data for regional equilibrium, 21 indicators and 151 sub-indicators were formed. A matrix of 31 * 21 was obtained after forming the provinces and then the whole country matrices. Later, by weighing each of the indicators according to the Delphi method, the ranking was obtained from the level of development of the provinces of the country in the TOPSIS software environment. To complete this section, using the cluster model, and according to the degree of enjoyment and deprivation of provinces, they were classified into 6 different groups. Also, at this stage, the ranking of budget allocations in the period considered for the provinces was also obtained and efficient provinces were also identified according to the development and budget of the provinces and the budget efficiency indicator in development. In addition, according to the "Regional Development Planning" model, the provinces were divided into two levels of developed and deprived provinces in terms of thirst in budget and effective management or mismanagement, and budget saturation.In the second stage, based on the existence of three variables, namely total budget, development budget, current budget (government volume), whose annual data were extracted from the Statistical Centre for each provinces, three simple regression models were formed. With the help of Eviews software, in the form of a data panel model, for each of the variables mentioned above, a coefficient of development was obtained and the effect of each variable was measured on the basis of its development.

The software output from the TOPSIS model indicated that Tehran and Ilam provinces were the most developed and least-favored provinces in the country, respectively. Also, in this section, an estimate of the average provincial budget allocation was made. In this regard, the provinces of Tehran and Semnan were placed at the top and at the end of the table, respectively. Also, in the case of regional development, by forming a cluster model, the provinces were classified in six clusters: the most developed cluster with only Tehran province; the developed cluster,, the relatively developed cluster, the relatively deprived cluster, the deprived cluster, with 3, 4, 5, and 17 provinces respectively while the very deprived cluster  had only Ilam province. Therefore, it can be said that approximately 74% of the provinces in the second half of the clusters were among the deprived provinces and 26% of the provinces were among the developed provinces.In the second part of the research, according to the development index extracted for the provinces, the other 3 variables: "total budget", "development budget" and "government volume (current budget)" were introduced and then their effects on development were measured by three independent regression models.The development budget had a higher positive effect on development than the overall budget, while the volume of government had a negative and reverse effect on development. In other words, with rising costs, development continued to decline. Therefore, it can be stated that in Iran, the lower the current costs and government volume, the higher the indicators of development. Another significant point in this research is the 10-fold and positive effect of developmental budget to the total budget and the 12-fold negative and reverse effects of increasing the volume of government volume to the total budget on development.
 

The present study shows that development in Iran has been distributed in an unbalanced way. The effect of various factors on the development of provinces has also been different. Some provinces have been more affected by the developmental budget and macro-provincial efficient management. Moreover, by increasing the volume of government, the development has slowed down.

Today, it is believable for the majority of economists that both physical and human capital accumulation  and technological changes are unable to fully explain the difference of economic growth rates between countries. What which mentioned recently as the main key for economic growth in the literature are institutional quality and financial development. The particular importance of institutional and financial structure in economic growth has been at the frontier of research for recent decades. Various studies have emphasized the critical role of institutional quality reform in financial and economic development since it provides the necessary base for more efficient allocation of financial resources. Regarding institutional quality, it is an essential and necessary condition to enhance financial development, so in this context, suitable policies are demanded. Good governance improves the allocation of resources and increases the impact of financial development on growth. In other words, the effectiveness of financial development in order to achieve economic growth increases with the improvement of governance.
 

The main aim of this paper is to study the effects of financial development and institutional quality on economic growth for the case of 27 member countries of Economic Development and Cooperation Organization (OECD) in 2002-2014, using Dynamic Panel Data analyses. In this paper, we used a weighted average of six indicators of accountability and accountability, political stability and lack of violence, government efficiency, order and regulation quality, rule of law and corruption control as an institutional indicator, and a weighted average of 18 variables, extracted from the World Bank, for the combined financial-financial development index. Statistical data of the variables, GDP to labor ratio, financial development indicators, gross fixed capital formation and work-force growth rate have been extracted from the World Development Index (WDI), and institutional quality indicators have been extracted from Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI).

Institutional quality is another important factor affecting economic growth, and its significant positive coefficient suggests that institutional quality is one of the key variables that influences the economic growth of OECD member countries. The significant positive effect of institutional quality on the economic growth of OECD member countries is in accordance with the theoretical and empirical results of studies on these countries; because these counties have high ratings in institutional variables such as the quality of bureaucracy, the right to comment and responsivity and rule of law, which that highlight their improved judicial system, executive system and civil liberties and hence the institutional quality. The coefficient of the variable of financial development index in the estimating models shows that the weighted average of financial development indicators has a significant positive effect on the economic growth of OECD member countries. By reducing transaction costs and accessing information, the financial sector has led to equipped savings and facilitated funding. This, in turn, has resulted in higher investment and faster economic growth. This result is consistent with theoretical foundations (supply-side view) of financial development and economic growth. This positive effect indicates that the economies of OECD countries have the necessities and benefits of favorable financial markets that respond to the needs of the economy, including the goals of liberalization, privatization and balance and development, and in this regard, yields many favorable and preemptive effects for different sectors of the economy. Part of these favorable effects of financial markets, and in particular the capital market, stems from the efficient functioning of financial institutions in the financial markets of OECD countries, and the other huge part stems from the environment of the economy, and economic-social and cultural-legal structures of these countries. Accordingly, the interactive effect of financial development and institutional quality has been inserted into the model to measure the efficiency of financial development in the shadow of institutional quality on the economic growth of OECD member countries. The coefficient of the interactive effect of financial development and institutional quality also indicates the significant positive effect of financial development on the economic growth of OECD member countries.

The findings of this paper showes that financial development and institutional quality have significant positive effects on the economic growth of OECD member countries, which is in line with the expected theory in Economic Growth. Also, the interactive effect of financial and institutional development showes that in developed countries due to proper institutional structure, financial development improves economic growth. According to our results, in the case that countries want to make major changes in their economic growth, they need to address institutional reforms in different sectors. Therefore, in order to facilitate economic activities and achieve economic progress, the policy makers of the studied countries must have a simultaneous attitude toward the economy and politics, and make their policy with the presumption that  two factors, financial development and institutional quality, reinforce each other and have a positive impact on economic growth.

 The environment over the past few decades has been one of the main and most important concerns of human societies. Hence, in recent years, the quality of the environment has become very important. The main objective of this paper is to study the impact of good governance and political-civil liberties indicators on the average of the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) over 101 countries during 2005-2015. The EPI index is chosen because it can represent the three dimensions of environmental quality, namely water, air, and soil. We focus on two

on the one hand a reduction in the environmental stresses to human health, and on the other hand the protection of ecosystems and natural resources. Among the institutional-political indices, good governance and political and civil liberties are chosen because of their combination and inclusiveness.
Theoretical frameworkThe environmental performance of a country is generally influenced by numerous factors. The literature on environmental sustainability has focused on several routes through which environmental performance could be affected. In the existing literature to explain how the economic factors affect the environmental performance, various theories such as the Kuznets Environmental Curve for the relationship between the per capita income level of a country and its environmental quality, Pollution Haven Hypothesis- the potential for environmental degradation in a country due to trade links and market failure due to externality and production and supply of public goods as a confirmation of government intervention, are used. Thus, based on the aforementioned theories and the literature review, among economic variables, per capita GDP, trade openness, and government economic policies (government investment) were selected. Among the institutional and social indexes, the good governance index and the human development index were selected because of their combination and inclusiveness.

 In this study, we take the environmental performance variable as dependent variable, GDP per capita and trade openness as control variables, and the overall and combined index of good governance and its six dimensions (namely, control of corruption, voice and accountability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, political stability and absence of violence and political-civil liberties index) as independent variables, are used. Using different tests of panel data indicates that the one-side constant effects model was selected. Finally, due to the existence of heteroscedasticity and serial correlation based on the relevant tests, the GLS method was used. 

 The main results from the empirical analysis show that governance and political-civil liberties indicators are strongly and directly related to the EPI policy. Broadly speaking, the coefficients of GDP per capita (YP), trade openness (TR), political-civil liberties (CL), good governance (GG), government effectiveness (GE), and rule of law (RL) are statistically significant and positive and support the theory. The significant positive effect of GDP per capita and negative significant effect of quadratic GDP per capita on environmental performance support Kuznets Hypothesis. This study categorizes the share of each component of good governance index on the environmental performance in the selected countries. The results show that YP, TR, CL, GG, GE, and RL contributes to EPI 0.58, 0.015, 2.9, 6, 2.5 AND 5.3 respectively. Therefore, by one unit improvement in YP, TR, CL, GG, GE, and RL the environmental performance will be about 0.58, 0.015, 2.9, 6, 2.5 and 5.3 points better.

 The findings obtained in this research have increased our knowledge of the EPI, through obtaining a picture of the environmental situation on a global level. Regarding the economic variable GDP and TR, our findings allow us to affirm that a higher level of good governance (especially rule of law) and political-civil liberties are strongly linked to the environmental performance of the countries. Therefore, planners and policymakers in selected countries should focus on the variables mentioned above which have more effects on the improvement of environmental performance. This finding leads us to posit an open topic for future research, which should include from a multivariate perspective more variables that may influence countries’ environmental performance, such as, technological development, research and innovation, and industrial structure.

Investigating the Relationship between Indicative Crude Oil and Iran's crude oil prices in different markets with the price of crude oil is very important in explaining prices in these areas. For this purpose, using monthly monthly data from 2010-2010 and Garch method, Iran's light crude oil prices were modeled in the West European market. Following the different estimates of Iran's light crude oil prices in the above market, the results show that the second model, in which the changes in the price of Iranian crude oil in the north-west of Europe were due to the quality difference of Saudi Arabia's crude oil with Iran, changes in the price difference of crude oil Brent late with ICE1, urual Rotterdam's crude oil price changes, and can not changes or Brent crude refining have been more accurately predicted than other models. However, the quality difference between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the northwestern market was not significant in this model. Nevertheless, the results of the model test show that the variables considered with less error (3.1) could predict the price of light crude oil of Iran in the North West European market.

  The existence of an appropriate business environment and the need to identify the factors affecting the business environment to improve the national production process and create new economic capacity is undeniable. Therefore, the present study aims to prioritize factors affecting the business environment in Golestan province. The favorable business environment has a significant impact on the attraction of domestic and foreign investment, employment and GDP growth (Bakhteiari and Shayesteh, 2012). The unfavorable business environment in Iran compared to other countries reduces the possibility of the presence of investors and economic activists in the country, and this can ultimately create a huge gap between Iran and developing countries (Zali et al., 2015). Thus, paying attention to the business environment and removing environmental barriers is vital in Iran. Furthermore, due to geographical location, natural resources, and agriculture in Golestan province, as well as the ways of communication with the tourist from Mashhad, sports and the existence of ethnic and cultural diversity in the province, there is a vast business capacity in this area. In addition, unlike some Gulf States, Iran is stretched geographically and each region has certain requirements that should be considered in any credible evaluation.
Research

In the case of Iran, there are only a few researches at the provincial level that study the factors that affect the business environment, including Midri et al. (2013), Gerivani and Ahmadi (2016), and Paaseban et al. (2015). The present study is the first one to prioritize effective factors on the business environment of Golestan province. In the same line, foreign researchers such as Klapper and Love (2011), using panel data in 92 countries, looked at the impact of business environment reforms on the entrance of new companies. In addition, Djankov et al. (2006), by examining the relationship between business regulations and economic growth in 135 developing countries, concluded that better-regulated countries had faster growth compare to disruptive regulations. Furthermore, Hanusch (2012) found that time and cost as factors affecting economic growth and considers the flow of investment necessary to improve the business environment.
Research

The present study aims to prioritize factors affecting the business environment in Golestan province. For this reason, a questionnaire was submitted to a sample in the form of pairwise comparison and Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) method, and the weight of each of the criteria was obtained through the Expert Choice hierarchical analysis software. The AHP method is one of the most famous multi-purpose decision-making techniques first developed by Saaty in the 1980s. This model, which is one of the most important multi-criteria decision-making techniques, is used to decide on very complex issues (Saaty, 1980, Narasimhan and Vickery, 1988).  

The findings of this study showed that the national and provincial factors, including decreasing government size, reducing restrictions on foreign investment attraction regulations, enforcing laws and regulations, and the power of influence by the competent people for each specialty, are priorities of the first to fourth. Factors for decreasing exchange rate fluctuations and ease of access to financial resources ranked fifth and sixth among the factors. Classification in the cost minimization criterion, as well as the ability to predict the government's economic policies in the speed criterion in conducting the business process ranked seventh and eighth among all factors. Other factors have gotten the next priorities. The ease of doing business also has the highest priority over cost minimization and the speed of doing business processes. The results of the research can affect the immediate attention and promptness of planners and policymakers to the basic priorities of the business environment in the national and provincial areas. In addition, the results of this study will be effective in continuously monitoring the business environment of the province, comparing it with other provinces and national indicators, and determining medium and long-term goals for promoting business environment indicators.

Democracy is one types of sovereignty, and its specific aspect is the formal declaration of the principle of the affiliation of a minority with the majority and the recognition of the freedom and the equal rights of individuals and citizens (Alem, 1996: 293). Since Pericles defined it as "the sovereignty of the people", until today that its consolidation and development in various western schools of thoughts, especially in the United States, is considered as the basic and specialized duty of the government, democracy has gone through major changes. As a result, it could not be studied separately from the economic and social conditions, and the actual and practical situation of society should be taken into consideration. In the final analysis, any democratic structure or system, as a form of political organization of community, serves as a certain mode of production and is determined by it. The theme and form of democracy have been evolved throughout history and has, always and completely, been closely dependent on the related socio-economic formations.In general, democracy is a form of governing that its power source is people, in which the choices of rulers are with the people and government affairs directly or indirectly governed by the people themselves. Economic development and political structure are closely interconnected. The success and duration of every political structure, whether totalitarian or democratic, depends on economic development, economic efficiency, and the quality of the government's economic policies. Real democracy could not be achieved without the equal participation of women in all institutions as well as proper access to education.

This study seeks to examine the impact of economic development, education, and gender equality on democracy among a selection of OPEC countries, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Venezuela, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Algeria, in over 2006-2016 using the generalized method of moments (GMM).The Democracy Index of the Economist Information Unit (EIU), annually shows a general picture of the state of democracy in the world; this index is based on 60 indicators grouped in five different categories measuring election method, pluralism, civil liberties political participation, and political culture. This index covers a range of 1-10 and categorizes countries as one of the four regime types: full democracies (8-10), flawed democracies (6-7/9), hybrid regimes (4-5/9), and authoritarian regimes (less than 4).The Human Development Index (HDI) measures the average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions: health, education, and income. The indicators of these three dimensions are calibrated and combined to generate an HDI score between zero and one.In addition, the percentage of enrollment in primary School (SC) is used as a measure of education. Gender equality is calculated by the percentage of women labor force (LA), the political participation of women in the National Parliament (SE), and the Gender Development Index (GDI).

According to the model estimation results, from the indices measuring economic development, namely GDP per capita and energy use, the former has a negative relationship with democracy while the latter has a positive link with democracy. Negative and meaningfulness of GDP per capita indicate that there is an inverse relationship between oil revenues and the level of democracy and political freedoms in oil-rich countries, as demonstrated by researchers like Friedman (2006) and Wacziarg (2011). In other words, based on these studies and the results of present study, it can be stated that by increasing oil revenues, the level of democracy in oil-rich countries has been reduced. As a result, there is a negative impact on the quality of people’s lives and their social welfare.The positive sign of energy use per capita, as an indicator of consumerism as well as a criterion for increasing economic growth, reflects the fact that people in oil-rich countries, who have a strong tendency to taking advantage of the modern features of the civilized world and are obsessed with new (and probably high-consumption) goods, may welcome democracy as a new commodity. Education also has the task of preparing students for the citizenship of the international community. The more foundation of democracy is been valued at the elementary education, the more the child will be prepared to accept a democratic society. Consequently, the government have to move in the same direction and respond to a generation that has been taught with the principles of democracy from their childhood.There is also a positive relationship between democracy and women's political participation. On the one hand, the real democracy is not realized without full and equal participation of women in all institutions. On the other hand, women’s equal rights in public and political life will fully be recognized just in the presence of democracy.What is evident in the current study is that all of the studied countries have been able to achieve the indicators to some extent by reaching an acceptable level of human and economic development over the studied years. Existence of a positive relationship between some of the above-mentioned factors suggests that the aforementioned countries should create necessary conditions and fundamental institutions to materialize democracy-related goals and public participation, and reduce their focus on oil revenues as much as possible.