Iranian Economic Review
Volume:12 Issue: 19, Spring 2007

The Iranian real gross domestic product in the period of 1338-1380 reveals a relatively high degree of instability. Some of this instability almost certainly arises because of external shocks to the economy. This paper focuses on three shocks, or interventions, which seems to have had particularly significant impacts on the Iranian economy. These are the political upheavals of mid 1350’s, the 1360 -68 War, and the oil shock and some policy reversals of early 1370’s. We construct a time series model for the purpose of intervention analysis and use this model to calculate the impact on the Iranian economy of each and every of these interventions.

In general gross domestic product (GDP) is a substantial element in macro-economic analysis. Policy makers of a country use variations of GDP for long run planning. Considering different economic conditions of a country, forecasting is a useful tool to identify the variations of GDP for planning. In this paper, quarterly GDP value during (1998-2003) is used as a base of analysis. The quarterly GDP values of the year (2004 -2005) are forecasted using Time series, Exponential smoothing and Neural network approaches. The results are compared with actual quarterly GDP value and error measurement are computed in each methods. Consequently statistical analyses are accomplished to show the best method of forecasting. We have shown that neural network approach method is the best alternative to forecast the GDP of Iran.

Growth and economic development are the primary goals of all economies and proper trade policy is one of the essential tools to achieve this goal. Economic analysts emphasize on promoting Non - Oil Exports as a successful strategy to achieve high economic growth rates. For this reason, in economic development plans, increasing of exports is emphasized as one of the basic instruments to achieve growth and economic development.Positive effects of exports on economic growth in developed and developing countries are proved in empirical studies and it is argued that countries who have adopted export orientation have enjoyed efficient resource allocation and higher growth. In this research using Iranian statistical data for the period 1959-2003 and applying a production function model, we try to examine the impact of non - oil exports on economic growth. Estimating econometric models in the case of Iran resulted in conclusions which are rooted in inherent facts of society and economy, and reveals considerable facts of Iranian economy. Results show too weak impact on gross domestic product growth of non - oil exports and also low factor productivity in export sector relative to non - export sector. It seems that small share of non oil exports in GDP and inept combination of non - oil exports and high portion of traditional and agricultural products in total exports are the main reasons. High dependency on oil and lack of basic and reasonable planning toward non - oil exports promotion is among the other problems that non - oil export sector is facing.

The aggregate model of North America includes residential-commercial and transportation sectors. The residential-commercial sector equation is Constant Elasticity Model (CEM) and in this paper we used it for Almon polynomial distributed lag model. This model gives the long run price elasticity of demand. The price elasticity compete the income elasticity in the sense that moderate increase in energy demand. The real price elasticity of demand is –0.19 while the income elasticity of demand is high considerably estimated as 0.59.Like price elasticity in the transportation sector (with the same method) is -0.1 delineating an inelastic demand to price. Also the income elasticity is rather considerable. Income elasticity in this sector is 0.67 that shows the driving force in energy demand in the North America is the transportation sector. The R&D efforts along with other non-price policies contribute in lower energy demand growth. The coefficient of filter variable to cover the asymmetric response of demand to price changes (as a proxy variable for technology improvement) is estimated as -0.037.Although technology improvements could relax the demand in this sector, but the demand growth still will be considerable.

This article examines the relationship between inflation and inflation-uncertainty in Iranian economy for the period 1369:1 to 1385:3. The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that inflation uncertainty increases at higher levels of inflation. Analysis of this study is based on the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (which allow the conditional variance of the error term to be time-varying). Since this variance is a proxy for inflation uncertainty, a positive relationship between the conditional variance and inflation would be interpreted as an evidence that inflation uncertainty increases with the level of inflation.Our findings indicate that inflation causes inflation uncertainty as there is a significant positive relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty. According to this result the role of Central Bank of Iran is so crucial in reducing inflation uncertainty by conducting proper policies.

The study demonstrates the fact that the majority of the Indian manufacturing industries have decreased their real unit cost by the benefits of economies of learning and economies of scale during 1991 – 2001. The study also shows that high and low concentrated industries are equally enjoying benefits of economies of scale but high concentrated industries are enjoying more of the benefits of economies of learning as compared to low concentrated industries. The results support the hypothesis that high concentrated industries enjoy more cost advantage than low concentrated industries. The results also indicate that Indian firms must pay more attention to the benefits of economies of learning (dynamic economies of scale) to promote their competitiveness in domestic and international markets otherwise they may lose their market share in the markets.

This paper pursues two goals. First, it uses an unrestricted error correction model and the bounds testing approach proposed by Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (2001) to study the short- and long-run effects of bank credit on inflation in Iran, a country with some history of interest-free banking system. Second, this paper examines how institutional and cultural changes resulted from bank nationalization and the implementation of interest-free banking have affected price level movement in Iran. The approach used in this paper is capable of testing the existence of long run relations regardless of whether the underlying variables are stationary, integrated, or mutually cointegrated. The result indicates that there exists a long-run relationship between inflation and its main determinants, namely, bank credit, import price, real GNP, and black market exchange rate. However, bank credit has no short-run effect on price level movement in Iran. Furthermore, the paper shows that the nationalization of banks and the implementation of interest-free banking system in Iran have caused a structural change in the behavior of inflation.

Increasing the private sector participation in economic activities and promoting competition were among the First 5 Year Socio-Economic Plan of Iran. This paper will examine the probable changes in monopoly and the size of government during this plan. By considering Concentration ratio as a proxy measure for the size of monopoly and competition, we found the Manufacturing sector of Iranian economy was highly concentrated in the beginning as well as at the end of the First Economic Plan. Furthermore, the share of government in economic activities increased during this plan, which is in contrast to the targets of the First 5 Year Socio-Economic plan and Iranian Structural Adjustment Program.

Human's efforts to achieve their ideals could be fulfilled via finding methods that would give him power to control nature and dominate over its forces and possibilities and provide necessary conditions for development. In the Islamic society or in the "developed" society of Mahdi's ruling (based on Muslim's belief) while we face abundance of production factors and efficiency of economic institutes, we could see the "developing" presence of Islamic government along with public ownerships for that active presence and through mass production of goods and services which has been realized in the light of security caused by justice for every body. The safety of economic activities becomes a support for the removal of poverty in increase economic welfare and jus distribution of wealth and income. The size of this abundance and richness is so much that one may say that the concept of economics evolves in domination of scarceness which has been formed as per the "non-satisfying needs" and "unlimited demands" of human being and desirability caused by the physical factors of production is replaced by desirability caused by acting the basis of Islam which is a manifestation of economic prosperity.