فصلنامه پژوهش ها و سیاست های اقتصادی
پیاپی 37-38 (بهار و تابستان 1385)

The low self-sufficiency coefficient of securing vegetable oil in Iran and the massive foreign exchange required for imports of raw oil and oil cake are regarded as one of the main problems in Iranian national economy. By recognizing appropriate regions for cultivating oil seeds and with a proper planning, this coefficient could be improved and the impact of the related adverse problems may be declined. Comparative advantage indices are regarded as the most important applied indices in order to recognize the appropriate regions and their ranking in the production of agricultural products. In this paper, for ranking provinces to produce oil seeds (oil sunflower, cotton seed, soya and colza), the Efficiency Advantage Index (EAI), Scale Advantage Indices (SAI) and the geometric mean of these indices in 1382 has been used. These indices are physical indices of the comparative advantage and are based on performance share and the percentage of the products in the province relative to the whole country. Regarding the obtained results of the calculated indices, the most appropriate provinces are as follow: Northern Khorasan and Ardebil for cotton seed, Golestan and Markazi for oil sunflower and Ardebil for colza and soya.

Say’s law and Walrasian equilibrium are simply for a barter economy. In a monetary and trade economy, Say’s law and Walrasian equilibrium need to be revised. By introducing the financial and monetary intermediaries as a third factor together with their respective markets in the general equilibrium model, the traditional economic theory can be improved. The money which leaves the economic activity by becoming a financial asset enters this process as financial capital and credit. This would not only add the monetary and financial markets to the real economic activities, but also influences the monetary and financial processes, thereby affecting wealth and production. Monetary and fiscal variables therefore affect the real economic variables via expenditure (investment) and income (saving). The traditional models such as IS-LM have not yet been able to explain this interaction in a precise and comprehensive manner. The model presented here has described the fiscal, monetary and real economic relationships in a new format and approach.

This paper examines the impact of the factors of production regarding their labour-intensive or capital-intensive properties on exports and imports in Iran during the three time periods of 1370, 1376 and 1382 using input-output model based on constant prices. The principle hypothesis of this research work is that regarding the utilization of labour and capital in exports and imports sectors, Iranian economic activities are based on relative advantage of the factors of production. Importing industries which account a high percentage of Iranian imports such as chemical industries, manufacturing and basic metals are among those sectors which are relatively more capital intensive regarding their exports as compared with their imports. Those industries which have higher share in nonoil exports, such as wood industries and wood product, agriculture, transportation, textile and commercial services are among the economic activities with lower capital-labour ratio, i.e., are relatively labour-intensive.

Economic integration is considered as a policy by which trade barriers should be relaxed gradually or disappear fully among members of a trading block. Integration arrangements are implemented to make economic policies beneficial to members in order to strengthen their economic relations. In principle, integration refers to unified monetary, financial and trade policies that countries of an economic union have agreed upon. Applying the panel data model to the gravity theory, this paper examines the effects of trade integration on trade flows between Iran and selected economic blocks over the period of 1992-2003. The results obtained imply that trade integration between Iran and the economic blocks like the European Union (EU), PGCC, D8 and East Asian countries can lead to trade creation, while the trade intensities of the EU-Iran and East Asia-Iran are more pronounced than those of the others.

Taxation of E-Commerce (EC) is one of the main challenges of Governments in the future. Traditional methods for taxation cannot respond in EC environment, because of the special features of EC such as the existence of digital goods, new kinds of assets, electronic payment, etc. Results indicate that EC has little effects on wealth tax and is most effective on the selling tax. Firms and consumers can exchange digital goods without registration. EC can improve import tax with transparent international law. Tax exemption causes little decline in government revenues in the short term, whereas its cost will be very large in the long-run. Governments should try to identify and register E-Corporations, E-Shops, E-Employment, and collect EC taxation. Governments should also consider simplicity, implementation and consistency of rules in E-Commerce taxation and try to announce criteria such as economic basics, special character of EC, discrimination principles and transaction security.