Iranian Economic Review
Volume:16 Issue: 32, Summer 2012

Traditionally, there have been notable differences among accounting systems for tracking economy-wide energy efficiency trends. Quite recently, attentions are directed to formal studies that can meet the need for uniformity in the design and application of such systems. Uniform systems can give us better insights into energy efficiency indicators. In this paper, the multiplicative Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) decomposition technique is introduced and applied in an analysis of energy use in Iran. The aim of the following investigation is to find out what causes the changes in energy use in Irans industrial and transportation sectors. The data of this work consist of final energy use over the 2001-2006 periods from annual energy balance sheets and sectorial values added from Input- Output tables over the same years. The obtained results show that energy consumption changes are determined by the activity levels. Next among the significant energy consumption determinants are structural and energy intensity impacts.

The aim of this paper has been to evaluate the effect of trade openness on the Iran’s environmental quality arising from its trade relations with the selected countries in East Asia, Middle East and OECD over the period 1991-2007. The study emphasizes on the scale, composition and technique effects as a result of the relationship between trade and environment. For the environmental quality, the CO2 data has been used alternatively. This article thus examines such relationship by estimating a panel regression CO2 emission model. The empirical results indicate a positive effect of increasing GPD on pollution of the countries in the first and second blocks. Additionally, the empirical results have shown that Iran could not benefit from its trade incomes with the OECD countries and in the Middle East. Also, due to the estimated positive coefficient of the capital-labor ration in the OECD block, the Iran's comparative advantage has been in dirty products.

Considering the scarcity of resources especially in developing countries, it is critical to identify the key sectors of these economies. Recognition of key sectors is one important subject for policy makers and economic planners. In determining key sectors both in theory and in practice several different methods are proposed in the literature. One of the most novel and recent approaches is based on network theory, under which different weights, known as influence indices, are assigned to both intermediate and final demand of sectors. In order to pinpoint those sectors with strong linkages in a contributing to the economy, network theory proposes a definition of centrality measures including total effects, meditative effects and immediate effects which considered as multilevel indicators. as. The purpose of this study is to determine the key sectors of Iran, South Korea and Turkey and compare the results using Iran’s 1999 input-output table, South Korea’s 2005 input-output table and Turkey's 2002 input-output table. The results show that considering the role of final demand for some economic activities are really important in identifying key sectors of Iran, Turkey and Korea although it is less important in some sectors of Turkey and South Korea.

Information and Communications Technologies(ICT) are transforming our world on a daily basis. In a fast-moving global economy, international trade, by adopting electronic technologies, could save billions of dollars every year. ICT development which has lead to faster, cheaper and more efficient modes of trade by reducing transactions costs. Due to the network characteristic of ICT, trade enhances when both trading partners have advanced ICT developments. The study analyzes empirically this theoretical argument. A gravity model is applied to assess the impact of ICT development on trade in Persian Gulf countries. In this study, it was tried to investigate the impact of ICT on business in the neighboring countries to the Persian Gulf. The obtained results from the gravity model assessment using panel data method for the countries of Iran, Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, and UAE from 2001 to 2009 showed that the better ICT development infrastructures the countries have, the more their business exchanges increase. In fact, for country business partners to increase business exchanges, it is imperative to have proper ICT development.

The inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) increased rapidly during the late 1980s and the 1990s in almost every region of the world revitalizing the long and contentious debate about the costs and benefits of FDI inflows. The “race-to-the-bottom” hypothesis was initially formulated in the context of local competition for investments within countries, where the decentralized environmental responsibilities gave in setting their environmental standards in line with their priorities (WTO 1999). Most critics argue that increased competition for foreign direct investment could lead to lowering of environmental standards and regulations (WB 2000). Furthermore, governments which attempt to maintain high standards will see their efforts undermined by the existence of less stringent regulations elsewhere. This will then lead to an overall lowering of environmental standards internationally (Jenkins et al. 2002). This paper aim is examination of “race-to-the-bottom” effects on the FDI inflow for 4 euro- Mediterranean countries, over 1980-2010. I have found that a decrease in the environmental regulations stringency has positive and statistically significant effect on the FDI inflow to this region.

This paper investigates the impact of institutional quality on relation between resource abundance and economic growth in major oil exporting countries by using panel data during period of 1996-2007. The research found that in the countries under study, institutional quality has a positive impact on economic growth, but resource abundance affected economic growth inversely. Meanwhile, natural resource abundance caused economic growth to be decreased.

Lack of infrastructure continues to be a key obstacle to growth and development in most of low-income countries. In recent years, however, the role of infrastructure has received increased attention. The goal of this paper is to provide an empirical evaluation of the role of infrastructure on economic growth of Iran over the period of 1985 to 2008. To do this, we have employed the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) framework and introduced Infrastructure capital as an input into aggregate production, because it comes at the cost of reduced investment in other types of capital. Our findings indicate that transportation facilities distinctively length of railway and roadway, also telecommunication infrastructure (fixed phone line) have positive and significant impact on economic growth of Iran but electricity production capacity doesn’t have significant impact on per capita output growth.

This paper examines the impact of modern technology including credit cards, automatic teller machines (ATM) and electronic funds of transfer at the Point-Of-Sale (POS) on money demand for Iran Using seasonal data for Iran 2001-2008. For this purpose, money demand function has been estimated on the basis of Rinaldian model (2001) by ARDL approach. Our findings indicate that the long-run impact of modern technology on demand for money is strongly greater than short-run. We have also shown that, as a result of increase in the number ATMs and credit cards, the demand for currency will increase in both short and long runs. Whereas the impact of increase in POS on demand for currency is negative. In addition, the error correction coefficient is 0.49 indicates that 49 percent of short-run fluctuations in money demand will be settled in long-run.