Testing Currency Substitution in Iran an Application of Auto Regressive with Distributed Lags (ARDL) Model

This article attempts to univestigate the phenomon of currency substitution in Iranian economy, using the ARDL model. For this purpose both long-run and short-run demand functions were estimated using the statistical data for 1974-2009 period. According to our findings, currency substitution both in long-run and short-run were confirmed with long-run substitution having a more powerful effect than long-run substitution. Also, it is indicated that the direct effect of income and the indirect effects of real interest rate and inflation on demand for money in the long-run were greater than in those in the short-run. The ECM estimated from the real demand function for money was -0.24 which expresses a rather slow process of currency adjustment in Iran.