فصلنامه اقتصاد مقداری
سال هفدهم شماره 3 (پیاپی 66، پاییز 1399)

The role of public sector expenditure shocks in the economy has always been of interest to policymakers and economists.  The government expenditures include government consumption and investment. This study investigates the effects of government expenditure shocks on macroeconomic variables for the annual data during 1978-2016 in Iran. In particular, the effects of government expenditure shocks on product variables, private sector consumption, private sector investment, real wages, and employment are examined. In addition, in the present study, the effect of government expenditure on household and enterprise behavior has been investigated. Therefore, the role of government investment through the production function and the role of government consumption through the utility function have entered the model. The model, appropriated for Iran’s economy, is designed in such a way that the monetary rule of the Central Bank of Iran would be based on the amount of money and also the government budget would be based on oil revenues, taxes, bonds and loans from the Central Bank. Finally, the model is estimated for the Iranian economy. The advantage of this model over other studies in Iran is the simultaneous investigation of the effects of various types of government expenditure on the inputs efficiency and consumer preferences. In other words, the model includes the impact of public sector investment on improving the efficiency of enterprises and dependence of consumer preferences on government consumption. The features of the model used in this research include having the fundamentals of microeconomics, nominal rigidity, incomplete competition market, and general equilibrium. The sections of model include households, enterprises, government, and the central bank. Since the model is random, it is possible to study the effects of nominal and actual shocks on key variables of the economy. In other words, the new Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) has been used to estimate the model. After solving the model, the system of linear equations by Bayesian method is estimated for the Iranian economy. The estimation results show that public sector investment has a direct effect on the production function and also government consumption has a direct effect on the utility function. The Markov-Chan-Monte-Carlo (MCMC) univariate and multivariate convergence tests, the matching of the prior and posterior distributions, as well as the final likelihood value were used to evaluate the model. Moreover, the model was evaluated through   matching simulation diagrams of variables and shocks. According to the results obtained from evaluation, this model seems appropriate for the Iranian economy. The immediate responses of government consumption and investment shocks to the variables of product, private sector consumption, private sector investment, real wages, and employment are examined. The effects of government consumption and investment shocks are also compared. The results show that in Iran, the accumulation of public investment improves the efficiency of enterprises. Moreover, consumer preferences are influenced by government consumption. In addition, the government consumption shock increases private sector investment, product, employment and real wages. The positive government investment shocks also increases efficiency, employment, real wages and reduces private consumption. On the other hand, there is also a complementary relationship between public and private investments. It seems that government investment can increase private sector investment by creating and expanding infrastructure. The results emphasize the role of the positive shock of government investment in improving economic conditions. Based on the findings, it seems important to pay attention to the role of government expenditure policies in dealing with the recession.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of economic freedom on the level of entrepreneurial activities in 30 selected countries from 2005 to 2014. Unemployment and the demand for government jobs have created deep socio-economic crises in world economy. However, in the context of competition, global developments, downturns, political and security events, threats and sanctions, limited access to natural resources, difficult geographic location and several other conditions, many countries have experienced economics growth and development. For example, net job growth in the United States, the European Union, and some Asian economies is largely driven by small businesses and entrepreneurship. Economic freedom and globalization are important factors that can contribute to increasing entrepreneurial and self-employment activities. With globalization and economic freedom, the move toward efficiency and optimization of resource use has begun and employment of inefficient activities that are only viable with government support will disappear and firms will be more prepared to gain self-employment and work in the private sector and global markets. In this study, based on the Freezer Institute's Economic Freedom Index, economic freedom was investigated using the following five indicators: 1. Government size (government spending, transfer payments, government ownership and government investment, highest tax rate); 2. Legal structure and security of property rights (judicial independence, protection of property rights, law enforcement, legal system integration); 3. Access to safe money (liquidity growth, inflation rate changes, standard deviation of inflation); 4. International trade freedom (Legal barriers to trade, export and import costs, capital market controls); 5. Regulation of foreign laws (Financial, Labor and Trade Laws). Entrepreneurial activities were selected based on the Global Entrepreneurship Observer's definition of five-level entrepreneurship, emerging, new, nascent, stabilized entrepreneurship, and business exit rates. The research method in this study followed models based on panel data (hybrid) using Generalized Least Square Estimation (GLS) in Eviews9 and Stata14 software environments. We adopted this model because in panel data models, the value of variables is measured both at certain points and over time, and the use of cross-sectional data for several consecutive years yields better and more reliable results. It also increases the explanatory power of the model. In order to determine the econometric model based on the theoretical and empirical studies of Verheil et al. (2002) in "Eclectic Theory on Entrepreneurship - Policies, Institutions and Culture", variables affecting entrepreneurial activities were identified for estimating and deducing the five models. The results show that economic freedom has a significant relationship with the level of entrepreneurial activities. Among the indicators examined, the indices of government size, the legal structure, and access to safe money had a positive and significant relationship, but the property security index had a negative and significant relationship with the level of entrepreneurial activity. A large government and a coherent legal structure encourage burgeoning entrepreneurial activities and have generally played a protective role since the founding of state-owned entrepreneurial activities. However, as entrepreneurial activities move forward, the role of the government becomes less and less to the extent that greater size and interference prevents them from leaving the business and market.

Theoretical studies show that the wavelet method is a suitable mathematical tool for analyzing signals and displaying them at different levels. At the same time, the wavelet method includes the order of waves and different tools for smoothing the series. Studies have shown that orthogonal walvelets including Haar, Daubechies, Symmelets, Coiflets, and Biorthogonal are the best types of wavelets. On the other hand, each type of wavelet is divided into different  orders, which is defined once for Haar wavelet, nine times for Daubechies wavelet, seven times for Symmelets wavelet, five times for Coiflets wavelet, fifteen times for Biorthogonal wavelet. Given that each of wavelet orders can be considered as a single wavelet, for orthogonal wavelets alone, thirty-seven wavelet types can be selected. On the other hand, for each type of wavelet, up to ten levels of decomposition can be performed, and each level of decomposition shows the process of economic trend in a different way, which means that a series can be decomposed into three hundred and seventy series. Economically, this means that 370 types of economic cycle formulas could be defined to examine a time series such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), each of which would certainly have different results and interpretations. This is very sensitive in short-term and long-term economic planning.Given that no research has been done on the superiority of the wavelet type in economic projects, many studies have been erroneous due to a lack of attention to the following questions, though valuable. 1- What is the definition of process and cycle? 2- What is the most suitable type of wavelet? 3- Which wavelet order is more suitable? 4- Which wavelet level is more suitable?  To answer these questions using the method of orthogonal wavelets of Haar, Daubechies, Symmelets, Coiflets, and Biorthogonal with a maximum of 5 levels, the best type, order, and level of the wavelets are investigated in order to smooth the business cycles in Iran during the seasonal period of 1367-1397 by applying retrospective simulation (ex-post) method and correlation analysis using MATLAB software. The results show that bior 2.2 wavelet has the highest quality in the analysis and smoothing of business cycles in Iran. Based on these results, the seasonal GDP logarithm series, decomposed using the bior 1.1 wavelet at level 2, has the highest quality of all wavelets in analyzing and smoothing economic data. The wavelets bior 2.2_l4, bior 2.2_l1, bior 3.1_l4, bior 2.2_l3, and bior 3.1_l5 are ranked second to sixth. Moreover, regardless of the type of wavelet, level 4 has the highest repetition in all levels and in this respect, it is considered the best level of analysis. Therefore, it is recommended to select the low selective wavelet level (maximum 3) when using annual data, and the high wavelet level (minimum more than 4) if the data is monthly or seasonal. Moreover, the estimation of Iran's business cycles shows that in the research period, there were 16 business cycles, which were the most consecutive years of recession related to the years 1380-82, 1387-89, and 1391-93.

Economic growth is one of the main goals of every country's economic policy. In recent years, the relationship between the development of the financial sector and energy consumption on economic growth has been the focus of many economists, but their relationship has never been a consensus among economic thinkers. The aim of this study is to explain the relationship between economic growth, energy consumption and development. Therefore, in this study, asymmetric analysis of the effects of energy consumption and financial development on Iran's economic growth is examined using a non-linear distribution interrupt (NARDL) self-regression model. The nonlinear and asymmetric relationship of energy consumption and financial development and economic growth has not been done together in Iran due to the fact that the positive or negative changes of one variable do not have similar effects on the other variable. This article aims to show the nonlinear relationships of these variables in the period between 1979 to 2017. Two different indicators were used for the variable of financial development (domestic credit to the private sector to GDP and liquidity to the private sector to GDP). The per capita energy consumption used in this study is the consumption of a variety of renewable and non-renewable resources divided by the population of a country, which is equivalent to a kilo ton of crude oil. The most important factors influencing economic growth have been labor and capital. In fact, labor and capital require intermediaries to use energy, and energy indirectly affects economic growth through its impact on labor and capital. The results show that the positive shock of energy consumption in the long run has a negative and significant effect on economic growth in a way that in the long run saving energy consumption has a negative and significant effect on economic growth. Negative shocks to financial development also have a long-term negative and significant effect on economic growth. This negative impact can be attributed to improper liberalization of financial markets, weak financial system, and incoherent financial market that has led to a reduction in investment through the misallocation of resources. On the other hand, the  increasing credit granted to the private sector, which is invested in unproductive work, has resulted in the weakness of this sector. The financial sector of Iran has been passive and has not been able to play an effective role in the process of economic growth. Therefore, the improvement and development of the financial sector is essential in order to activate the function of this sector in the process of economic growth and the optimal allocation of financial resources resulting from oil revenues. In addition, long-term capital has little effect on economic growth, and labor has a negative effect on economic growth, indicating that labor reduces consumption and investment activities. On the other hand, the negative shock of energy consumption reduces economic growth, albeit rather insignificantly. Also, the negative shock in financial development is negatively and significantly related to economic growth, and this negative effect is due to improper liberalization of the financial markets, the weakness of the financial system, and the lack of a coherently regulated financial market, which has led to a reduction in investment through the misallocation of resources. The labor force has a negative and significant effect on economic growth. The diagnostic tests examined in this study reveal that the tests are approved, and finally the results of the tests for the stability of the estimated coefficients and the stability test for short-term and long-term coefficients show the stability of the coefficients and validity and reliability at a significant level of 5%.

Poverty is one of the main factors human has faced society throughout history. High economic growth over the last decade has given rise to the idea that growth can reduce global poverty. In the 1950s and 1960s, most developmental ideas about growth and poverty was also about trickle-down growth. It was then widely thought that growth would lead to an increase in poverty, an idea that Bhagavati presented in 1988 during the Green Revolution. But in two decades, the developmental literature on pro-poor growth has expanded. Inequality is just as important as growth because increasing inequality leads to an increase in social class distance and might cause failure in improving the situation of the poor in society. Since the Kuznets assumption states that growth in the early stages leads to increased inequality as long as countries earn an average income, growth will support the poor when, in addition to reducing poverty, it has also helped reduce inequality.In this study, the relationship between the three concepts of development, namely poverty, inequality, and growth, using the indexes of pro-poor growth (Kakwani & Pernia, 2000; Kakwani & Sun, 2003) in 9 Islamic countries, has been examined and the latest available data in PovcalNet Information Base and Stata analytical distribution package was utilized. The main purpose of this research is to examine the nature of growth without considering the determinants factors of growth. The results for Kazakhstan (2001-2006, 2006-2006, and 2010-2010) show that growth has led to a reduction in poverty as well as a real reduction in the inequality between the poor and the rich, which reflects a high pro-poor growth in this country. Moreover, Tajikistan (2004-1999) has also experienced the largest reduction in poverty. The results show that the nature of growth in Tajikistan (2009-2005) and Turkey (2002-2002), which experienced positive growth, was poor by measuring various poverty indicators. Moreover, the nature of the growth in Iran during 2014-2006 using pro-poor growth index (PPGI) and Poverty Equivalent Growth Rate (PEGR), has been poor and pro-poor, respectively. In general, the results showed that growth in Islamic countries cannot be regarded as a relative pro-poor growth. If the pro-poor growth is measured by different indicators of poverty, people close to the poverty line will benefit more from growth than those who live far from the poverty line (the poorest poor).

The set of theories presented on achieving economic growth and development are divided into two main groups: One is balanced growth theory and the other is unbalanced theory. Balanced growth theory states that in order to achieve economic development, it is necessary to start investing in all economic activities and different sectors so that different sectors can support each other. But since this theory is not able to solve problems such as lack of capital and scarcity of resources, it was criticized by proponents of the theory of unbalanced growth. One of the most famous theories of unbalanced growth is the Bamol theory. The Bamol's theory considers the impact of labor and capital productivity growth on other economic sectors as important and emphasizes that productivity growth in the production sector leads to the production of high-tech goods because technology is affected by productivity. This theory is known as the Scandinavian model of inflation and divides the economy into two parts: Leading (private sector) and non-leading (public sector) sectors. Three assumptions are made in this model. Hopothesis 1: Goods and services in the government sector are less attractive and less expensive. Hopothesis 2: Improving and increasing productivity in the private sector is more than the public sector. Hopothesis 3:  The wage rate is the same in both the private and public sectors. It can be said that if the rate of production of the public sector remains constant compared to the private sector, then the resources of the labor force must be transferred from the private sector to the public sector. Bamol states that, productivity changes are due to technological changes, and that technological changes are more relevant to capital equipment. Given that government activities are mostly service-oriented, increasing productivity is less likely to lead to higher unit cost of production. One of the important concepts is to pay attention to the economic complexity index, which refers to the production characteristics of knowledge-based products in the country, as well as diversifying the country's export goods. Economic complexity is a criterion for calculating knowledge and skills in a society that is achieved through the products produced in that society, because the ideology associated with it is based on the fact that if the production of a product requires a certain type of knowledge and skills, it can be concluded that the countries that produce that product also have the knowledge and skills needed to produce it. In other words, the products we produce show us the traces of knowledge and skills. The economic complexity index of any country is an average of the values ​​of its exports. In this regard, the government can increase the quality of public services, the quality of civil services, and also increase the credibility of commitment to the implementation of fiscal policies through increasing the productivity of all factors of production and diversify the products. In order to distinguish between domestic and export diversification, it is necessary to know the current situation, to take appropriate policies (here to adopt and implement appropriate fiscal policy) and to refine the exact results of these policies. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of government financial policies and their effectiveness in the economic complexity index of the Organization of the Islamic Countries (OIC) during 2002-2017, using Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation. The results showed that the total productivity factors, financial development, and government effectiveness have positive effects on the economic complexity of the selected countries, which is in line with Bamol's theory of growth. Moreover, the impact of government size and gross domestic product on the economic complexity is estimated as meaningless. Therefore, with the improvement of institutional and economic regimes, it is necessary to provide suitable bases for using the knowledge of high-tech imported goods in order to have a more diverse export basket.