سعید کریمی پتانلار

The outbreak of the new coronavirus since December 2019 in Wuhan, China, caused many negative effects on countries around the world. This crisis was initially recognized only as a threat to public health; But with its epidemic in most countries of the world, it became a serious crisis for the global economy.The shock caused by the Covid-19 crisis has had various impacts on the economic situation of countries around the world. Income inequality is one of the most important areas affected by the crisis. Hence, the aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the shock caused by this crisis on income inequality for (22) developed countries and (46) developing countries during the years (2020 to 2022 AD) using a seasonal panel vector autoregression (PVAR) model. The results indicate that the Covid-19 crisis has increased income inequality in both developed and developing countries. What can be inferred from the results of the impact reaction functions is that with the onset of the crisis, the effects of the direct tax shock, the degree of trade openness, the strictness index and the rate of covid-19 infection on the Gini coefficient in both groups of countries have led to an increase in income inequality. Also, in developed countries, the effect of the human development index shock on the Gini coefficient is negative, but in developing countries, the effect is positive and has increased income inequality. The results of variance analysis of prediction error for both groups of countries show that the strictness index is the dominant factor in explaining the variance analysis of Gini coefficient prediction error.

In this article, the effects of oil revenue shocks on the constituent components of the government's expenditures during the period of 1990/04 to 2018/04 and tax revenues during the period of 1993/01 to 2018/04 in Iran are investigated. In this regard, in order to consider the structural instability in the parameters, time-varying parameter generalized vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) models have been used. Based on the results obtained from the first model of the research, the impact of oil income impulses on defense expenditure is estimated to be positive. Although the said effect quickly disappears in the later periods. Therefore, it can be said that the impact of oil revenue impulses on government defense expenses is temporary. Also, the effect of impulses on economic and social affairs expenditures is estimated to be positive. The impact of oil income impulses on public affairs expenses was initially positive, but it gradually decreased and reversed in later periods. The results of the second model of the research, in which the impact of oil revenue shocks on direct and indirect tax revenues is investigated. The impact of oil revenue impulses on direct tax revenues from the positive range is quickly placed in the negative range. On the opposite point, the impact of oil income impulses on indirect taxes starts from the negative range and then quickly moves to the positive range. Also, the impact of oil revenue impulses on indirect taxes can be considered positive.

considering the importance of oil shocks in Iran's economy, in this research, an attempt has been made to examine the effects of oil income shocks on the expenditure and income components of the government's general budget. in this regard, in order to consider structural instability in parameters, time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) models are used. this model allows the estimated coefficients vary over time. in this research, the seasonal data in period of 1990/02-2019/01 be used. the estimation results of the models indicate the positive and short-term effects of oil income shocks on current expenditures and construction expenditures. the estimation of the second model shows the negative impact of oil shocks on tax revenues and the positive impact on other government revenues. the results of reaction functions (IRF) also show that the mentioned effects have a short duration and are reversed in the next periods and disappear quickly. also, the estimation results of the models show that the impact of oil shocks on inflation has varied over time and changed from negative to positive after the income shock of 2005.

Corruption and the fight against its various forms have constantly been a concern of theorists and policymakers because corruption is one of the important obstacles to socio-economic development. Economists have issued warnings about the devastating consequences of financial corruption and have argued that financial corruption increases transaction costs, reduces investment incentives, and ultimately reduces economic growth. Political scientists have pointed out the political costs of corruption for societies and claimed that an increase in corruption leads to a decrease in public trust in the political system and the destruction of the government's legitimacy, and could have a negative impact on democracy and political development. The manner in which this phenomenon influences growth and development is that it typically leads to more inequality and loss of public trust in government. By reducing political accountability, it undermines democracy and good governance. The economic approach is useful to study the causes of financial corruption because the researchers will be able to pay close attention to the underlying motivations and rationality to explain this problem of corruption. The researchers will be able to explain and understand why some individuals make choices based on their preferences that results in financial corruption. Some individuals are more corruption-prone and willing to engage in corruption when the opportunity arises to maximize financial gains for their own personal use or act as agents of corruption in their institutional roles for collective gains. Equally important is the task of discussing the anti-corruption efforts to deter future corruption behaviors of individuals and to combat state-sponsored institutional corrupt practices. In order to formulate effective strategies and policies to win the fight against corruption, it is necessary to first identify and understand the causes of corruption.With a qualitative approach and within the framework of public choice theory, the authors analyze a collection of the most important empirical and theoretical work on the causes of corruption with the goal of finding suitable answers to the following research questions: 1. What are the prominent differences between economic and non-economic approaches to explain the causes of financial corruption? 2. Does the economic approach used to explain the causes of financial corruption have more explanatory power than the non-economic approaches? The research hypothesis assumes that the use of economic approaches (general choice theory) to study financial corruption is more effective in analyzing the financial corruption-development association. The essence of the general choice theory to explain the behaviors of individuals and political elites is that these individuals seek to maximize their own personal gains and/or the collective benefits of a particular group, party, class and family with no or little regard for the maximization of the accrued benefits for the society at large. A key question is, to what extent the corrupt individuals are rational actors, given that they make choices which are generally perceived as irrational by other individuals—who do not get involved in corrupt practices. A multitude of reasons might influence an individual to make a ‘rational’ decision to engage in financial corruption practices. Theoretically, he makes a rational choice, because his calculations indicate that the expected benefit of financial corruption exceeds the expected cost including the cost of being detected, arrested and punished for his illicit acts.The critics of the economic approach to explain financial corruption emphasize a score of economic and non-economic factors such as weak economic development, low levels of education, poor quality of the bureaucracy, reduced transparency in laws and tax regulations, misconduct of community leaders, and religious composition of the total population. The existence of ethnic-linguistic subgroups in a country, the low degree of democracy (indicated particularly by the lack of freedom of speech and the freedom of the press), and political instability have been emphasized in the non-economic approach to the study of financial corruption. However, the effects of the non-economic causes of financial corruption are indirectly through economic factors. The individuals generally base their decision-making on their cost-benefit analyses and if the gains exceed the cost, they get engage in corruption. In other words, the improved quality of bureaucracy and transparency do not necessarily prevent a person from committing acts of financial corruption, but the high quality of bureaucracy and the high degree of democracy (particularly freedom of the press and transparency) reduce financial corruption by increasing the cost of corruption behaviors. The results suggest that non-economic approaches have been useful in explaining causes and consequences of corruption to a certain degree, but economic approach is more effective for understanding the motivations of corruption and its consequences for economic and political development. These research findings are important for planning and implementing anti-corruption programs such as enforceable ethical code of conduct, and regulations to increase transparency and accountability for public officials.

The Covid-19 crisis was first recognized as a serious threat to public health around the world, but as it grew into a pandemic all over the globe, it inflicted enormous losses on the economies of many countries grappling with tackling its grip. The negative effect of this crisis has been different between countries and the role of governments turned to be a decisive one in dealing with it; The aim of this research has been to investigate the effect of the covid-19 shock on the public sectors of 19 developed and 24 developing countries for the period ranging from 2020 to 2022 using a panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model run on seasonal data. The results show that the covid-19 crisis has led to an all the way down to an increase in healthcare expenditures, budget deficits, government size and a slump in tax revenues. What makes the patterns witnessed in these two groups of countries different is the degree of the effect the crisis had on aforementioned variables. The results show that overall, the developing countries have been affected the most by the crisis.

This study aims to model tax evasion and identify how these factors affect tax evasion. The current research is in the field of applied research. To achieve this purpose, the Bayesian averaging method has been used in the period from 1370 to 1399 in MATLAB 2021.In this research, 62 variables affecting tax evasion were included in the model and using the Bayesian averaging model approach, from 1 to 12 non-fragile variables affecting tax evasion were identified. The results show the fact that the inflation rate is the most non-fragile variable affecting tax evasion. Also, based on the results of the TVPFAVAR model, it was observed that the shock effect of macroeconomic variables (inflation, exchange rate, unemployment, budget deficit) on tax evasion was generally positive and strong, while the effect of cultural variables (tax culture, tax effort, tax morale), tax fairness and tax justice), generally has a small and negative effect on this variable.

The existence of a structural budget deficit in Iranian economy and the lack of fiscal discipline have raised concerns about the financial stability of governments among economists. In recent decades, fiscal rules have been considered as a way to establish fiscal discipline and financial sustainability of governments around the world. In this regard, the present study seeks to design a fiscal framework based on the three rules of debt ceiling, budget balance and expenditure for Iranian economy. The results of applying the stochastic simulation method show a high level of current public debt compared to the debt rule ceiling estimated by the model and the budget balance rule will be greatly effective in improving the future path of public debt. In other words, applying the budget balance rule reduces the fluctuations of the future path of public debt. It is also suggested to establish an institutional mechanism as a complementary institution with the aim of improving the performance and effectiveness of fiscal rules, especially for expenditures rule and ensuring their implementation

This study seeks to model tax evasion and identify how effective factors affect tax evasion in the Iranian economy. Recent models show the failure of traditional models; Models do not have enough ability to model hidden variables such as tax evasion. The present study considers this failure in identifying explanatory variables and experimental model design. To achieve this, the Bayesian averaging method has been used in the period 1370 to 1397 in MATLAB 2021.In this study, 62 variables affecting tax evasion were entered into the model, and using the Bayesian averaging model approach, 1 to 12 non-fragile variables affecting tax evasion were identified. The results show that inflation is the most fragile variable affecting tax evasion. As a result, in tax evasion modeling, inflation has the highest direct relationship with tax evasion; Also, based on the results, the most important variables affecting tax evasion in modeling tax evasion in order of priority are inflation, exchange rate, tax culture, unemployment, tax fairness, tax effort, budget deficit, tax morale, privatization, tax complexity, value-added ratio. The GDP services sector, fair tax system. According to the results, both political and cultural, and economic factors have a significant impact on tax evasion.

In this paper, the effect of social capital on the efficiency of government expenditures has been studied in the two sectors of education and health during the period 1364-1396. social capital has been estimated by The Multiple Causes-Impact (MIMIC) approach, and efficiency of government expenditures in both education and health is estimated by the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Bootstrap data envelopment analysis approaches. The effect of social capital on the efficiency of government expenditures are measured by the regression model of the deficit probe in both education and health.
 The results of estimating social capital show that the trend of social capital is declining by the method of  Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes during the study period. Also, the efficiency scores of government expenditures has been measured by Data Envelopment Analysis and Bootstrap Data Envelopment Analysis in Iran. The results show that on average, public spending is inefficient in education and health.
Findings of the fractional probit model show, the effect of social capital is positive and significant on the efficiency of government spending in both education and health. The effect of per capita income, economic growth, government size, inflation and trade openness is different on efficiency of government expenditures in education and health sectors.
 For example, the impact of economic growth is positive on the efficiency of government education and health spending. While the effect of government size is negative on the efficiency of government education and health spending.

Value added tax as an indirect tax is one of the effective sources of government tax revenue and the study of its economic effects is the focus of many economic studies. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to investigate the effect of VAT on the stability of the public sector economy in Iran with the approach of promoting tax ethics and culture.

The present study was applied and among descriptive-relational researches. The statistical population of quarterly and tax data during the years 1393-1389 was the information of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In this study, due to the selection of macroeconomic variables, the whole statistical population was considered as a statistical sample and collected using a checklist. Data analysis was performed using autoregressive pattern method with ARDL distributive interval.

Two models were presented in this regard: in the first model, the variable value added tax (VAT) with a coefficient of -0.71 at an error level of 1% had a negative and significant effect on budget deficit fluctuations. In the second model, the value added tax coefficient was -0.49 at the 1% error level and had a negative effect on tax revenue fluctuations in the current period.

The results of estimating the research models indicate that VAT is effective and useful in providing and stabilizing the public sector economy by reducing tax fluctuations and government budget deficit fluctuations in Iran. By consolidating and expanding the activities of the public sector, the issue will lead to greater welfare for the general public as well as improving the culture and tax ethics in the country.

Inflation affects the state budget in both ways. Inflation, on the one hand, decreases the purchasing power of tax revenues, which is known as the tension effect. On the other hand, the inflationary burden of government expenditures and its obligations actually decreases, which is known as an antithetical effect. Meanwhile, it should be noted that inflation also affects the budget deficit of the state. In the present study, using a discrete wavelet converter with maximum matching and a vector of autoregressive vector autoregression, the interaction effects of inflation and deficit of government in two cases of deficit and total deficit in the economy of Iran in 1396: 1369: 1 is reviewed from a new angle. Results based on the wavelet converter show that in horizons for more than 8 years, the causal relationship is between the two types of budget deficit with bilateral inflation. Based on the results of the estimation of the autumnal regression model, the threshold vector in seasonal inflation is less than 5.7% of the total budget deficit in the face of inflationary swings, which reflects the dominance of the anti-tensile effect of the Tensi Is. In addition, the operating deficit, regardless of the situation, is from the threshold of positive reaction to the swing momentum.

Healthcare insurance coverage services in Iran are limited, and out-of-pocket costs are very high. Supplementary health insurance grants extra coverage and additional healthcare services in the presence of limited health insurance services to the individuals and protects them against huge healthcare costs. One of the obstacles to expanded health insurance schemes, especially in supplementary health insurance, is an undetermined willingness to pay (WTP) for these types of coverages. The objective of this study is to estimate WTP for supplementary health insurance. Data collected from small and medium enterprise employees in 7 areas Iran including Tehran, Shiraz, and Bandar-e Abbas in 2017 and the contingent valuation method and a logit regression model was implemented to analyze the data. Results show that WTP for supplementary health insurance is 70.23 thousand Tumans. Education level, employment status, real income, current health conditions, history of chronic disease, number of doctor visits, real healthcare costs, and satisfaction from healthcare services are all found to affect WTP for supplementary health insurance.

Environmental degradation can be caused by factors such as population growth, economic growth, energy intensity and income distribution. In this paper, the environmental impact of inequality in income distribution using time series data from the years 1357-1394, with Auto Regression methods Distributed Lag (ARDL) is investigated. Also, the causality relationship between the model variables has been investigated using the Toda-Yamamoto causality method. According to the results of the estimation of the research model, GDP per capita, Gini coefficient and total energy consumption per capita have a positive effect on CO2 emission, and the squared variables of GDP per capita and urbanization to population ratio have a negative effect. In the meantime, the most effective coefficient, GDP per capita is positive. Also The Kuznets environmental curve hypothesis is confirmed in Iran. The results of the causality test also show that there is only bidirectional causality between GDP per capita and carbon dioxide emissions. The one-way causal flow from the Gini coefficient logarithm, the per capita energy consumption logarithm, the urban-to-population ratio logarithmic to the CO2 emission logarithm are verified.

There are numerous and conflicting views on the impact of corruption on economic growth. A number of humanities scholars have described corruption as a good phenomenon and called it the grease wheel of the economy, and they believe that financial corruption improves the weak economic institutions, and by that means , The growth rate of the economy will increase. On the other hand, some scholars have emphasized the undesirable nature of corruption and considered financial corruption as the economy's sand and argued that corruption is costly and costly, and the ineffectiveness of the administrative process and the transfer of resources to non-productive activities is eroding economic growth.This paper studies the impact of corruption on the growth of the Iranian economy from 1983 to 2014 by using the talent allocation approach and by applying the econometric method of equation system. The divergence in talent allocation has slowed the growth of the Iranian economy in of these years.

Regional unbalanced growth and the factors affecting it are one of the most important economic issues in developing countries. One of the characteristics of developing countries is the presence of significant regional inequalities. The existence of this phenomenon is one of the main impediments to balanced development in these countries. One of its specific consequences is the creation of inequalities and the consolidation and expansion of deprivation. Inequality alongside widespread poverty can provide grounds for public discontent and thus be one of the concerns of socio-economic policymakers. Considering the importance of balanced regional development in the country and the environmental-spatial potentials and political characteristics of the provinces, this study considers the effects of environmental and political factors on the distribution of inequality in provinces of Iran, considering the neighborhood effects.

Theoretical framework:

Environmental differences play a decisive role in the distribution of regional inequality. At the early stage of economic development, environmental conditions are one of the most determining factors. For example, favorable environmental conditions are often the basis for rapid growth in developing countries. Although the effects of environmental conditions on regional development at higher levels are less pronounced, the specific functions of these factors are still unknown in many countries. In economic literature, several environmental factors influence and are influenced by the distribution of regional inequality. Variables such as cities with coastal boundaries, commercial areas, tourism, water resources, railways, border areas and urban development are among the areas considered in regional studies. Modern governments, unwittingly or unwillingly, engage in various economic policies such as monetary policy, fiscal policy, and commercial policy. Applying these policies shift interests and the pattern of income distribution and create winners and losers across different segments and groups of society, thereby changing regional inequalities.

Spatial inequality refers to situations in which different spatial or geographical units of some variables are at different levels. In the present study, after investigating the regional inequality with regard to the effects of spillover in the provinces, an assessment of the environmental and political factors on it during 2006 to 2015 has been examined. The explanatory variables were compiled according to the purpose of the study, based on environmental and political factors that cause regional imbalances and also according to the statistical constraints of the country. According to the theoretical foundations, identifying variables in previous studies as well as statistical feasibility in the country, from three models has been used to investigate the impact of environmental and political factors on regional inequality.The variables used include urban index, dummy variable for business areas, tourist and religious centers, the logarithm of GDP, ratio of government expenditure to GDP, Ratio of education cost to the government expenditure and the members of parliament.

The evaluation of Population-Weighted Coefficient of Variation (PW-CV) indices show that Iranian provinces during the research period have been very inadequate. The results of estimating Spatial Autoregressive with Autoregressive Error (SARAR) regression models indicate a strong spatial dependence among the provinces. So that the inequality index of each province with an approximate coefficient of 45% is affected by the economic inequality in neighborhood provinces. In the analysis of environmental factors affecting regional inequality; urban development, water resources and tourism have a negative relationship with provinces' inequality and as each of these factors increases, the inequality index of the provinces will decrease. But religious and commercial provinces have a positive impact on economic inequality; as a result, inequalities are higher in these provinces. Results of the estimation of the impact of political variables on regional inequality show that the provinces with a more gross domestic product, have a higher inequality index. Moreover, the larger the size of the government in the provinces, the more economic inequality. Also, increasing the share of education costs from provincial budgets increase regional inequality and in the provinces where the number of members of parliament is higher, there are more economic inequalities.

Conclusions and suggestions:

According to the results of the present study, the importance of the distribution of inequality in different provinces and the effects of neighborhoods with regard to environmental and political factors are overemphasized. Governments and trusted entities in different areas can be more successful in delivering social justice and reducing regional inequalities by designing and implementing management policies tailored to each province's environmental and political potentials. Managing water resources, paying attention to tourism, controlling suburbs in big and religious cities, and implementing income redistribution policies are some of the policies that can be implemented in environmental and operational areas. Reducing government tenure and administrative bureaucracy are also some of the factors that will be effective in reducing regional inequalities.

The phenomenon of tax evasion has been always one of the most major issues among economists due to it's devastating effects on the economy and the process of economic development. Many scholars have always sought to provide solutions to reduce and limit tax evasion. The introduction of the VAT system can be seen as a milestone in the area of economic transparency and tax evasion, which refers to counteracting this phenomenon through reforming the structure of the tax system. In the present study, the effect of VAT on the tax evasion phenomenon has been discussed. For this purpose, the research hypothesis has been tested for data from 28 OECD countries in the period from 2013 to 2002 using generalized moments method. The results of the estimation show that by expanding the value added tax, the tax evasion phenomenon also decreases. Also, agricultural value added has a positive effect on tax evasion, while the effect of inflation and rule of law are negative. Therefore, in order to deal with the phenomenon of tax evasion, attention to institutional factors, along with attention to economic factors such as the structure of the tax system, is proposed.

In respect of dominant role of government public costs in Iran’s economy, forecasting accuracy of that and its evaluation has a high degree of importance. In this research, based on various statistic, both summary statistics and aggregate statistics, forecasting accuracy of first statude and second statude of Forecasting Error of Government Public Costs are evaluated over the period 1353-1392. Then, stochastic and determined components of forecasting error of these errors are obtained. Afterwards, the forecasting errors effects on price level and inflation in Iran are investigated by Vector Error Correction Model. The results of research indicate that considerable part of forecasting error of public costs are determined and correctable. Moreover, negative part of forecasting errors of expense element of government’s budget have significant and positive effect on price level and inflation in Iran.

The purpose of current paper is to survey the asymmetric effects of inflation's positive and negative shocks on inflation uncertainty in short-run and long-run. For this end, first, the Ball model (1992) has been extended through the decomposition of inflation shocks to money demand's positive and negative shocks and money supply's positive and negative shocks. Then, through using nonlinear autoregressive distribution lag model and time series data of Iranian economy from 1978 to 2017 the positive and negative effects of inflation on inflation uncertainty, which is from the exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model, has been analyzed. The results of the study show that the effects of the inflation's positive shocks on inflation uncertainty in short-run and long-run are positive and significant. In contrast, the negative shocks have not any effects on inflation uncertainty in short-run and long-run. In other words, the rise in inflation causes an increase in inflation uncertainty in Iran; whereas, decrease in inflation has not had effects on inflation uncertainty.

The aim of this article is to analyze the effect of shocks of fiscal consolidation policy on the macroeconomic variables in Iran. In this regard by using Factor Augmented Vector Auto Regression (FAVAR) method, the effect of shock types of deficit ratio to GDP on important macroeconomic variables including total real GDP growth, inflation, private consumption growth and investment growth over the period 1363: 1 -1394: 4 is investigated. The results of research models show that the effect of fiscal consolidation policy on the macroeconomic variables are different, and it is difficult to provide the same policy tool to affect all variables. The results obtained in one-year, two-year and four-year periods indicate that the fiscal consolidation policy cannot be identified during the one-year period. But in the two-year and four-year periods, the main instrument of fiscal consolidation is deficit-deflation and deficit-free oil. It should be noted that the consumption deficit is calculated as tax revenue minus the consumption expenditure of the government divided by GDP and the deficit without oil as the total state revenue (without oil revenue) minus current expenditures divided by GDP.

The aim of this article is to analyzing the effect of shocks of fiscal consolidation policy on the macroeconomic variables of Iran. In this regard by using Factor Augmented Vector Auto Regression (FAVAR) method the effect of shocks on government revenues and expenditures on important macroeconomic variables including total real GDP growth, inflation, private consumption growth and investment growth over the period 1984:1 -2015:4 is investigated.
The results of research models show that the effect of fiscal consolidation policy on the macroeconomic variables are different, and it is difficult to provide a same policy tool to effect all variables. Thus with emphasis on real GDP growth which is a major factor that affects other macroeconomic variables, it can be noted that in short term which consists of 4 seasons, reducing public expenditures and increasing government revenues lead to a reduction in production in response to a negative reaction to investment and private consumption and inflation will decrease. Therefore in the short term the suitable policy for fiscal consolidation is a combination of expenditure cut and income rising and in particular, the policy of reducing current expenditure and increasing import taxes. In the medium and long term, respectively consist of 8 and 16 seasons, real GDP growth responses positively to the expenditures cut policy, decline in current expenditures and social public expenditures is introduced as an instrument of fiscal consolidation policy.

The purpose of this paper is that using a translog production function and random effect models show that the VAT impact on productivity in Iran. It also uses a model of endogenous growth include households, corporations and governments, the optimal rate of this tax is estimated by calibrating the model for Iran. Because productivity can be divided into three production efficiency, technical efficiency and scale efficiency decomposed (Kambakar and Lowell, 2000) We VAT impact on each of the three sections have reviewed. The results show that increasing the share of VAT positive impact on improving production efficiency, but its impact on technical efficiency and returns to scale is negative.the tax agencies and other firms producing can increase the productivity of their manufacturing process. The results of the estimated model shows that the optimal rate of VAT for the economy by taking 19 percent of the oil revenues and regardless of oil revenues is 21%.

This paper examines the own price and substitution elasticity of the labor force demand for small and medium scale firms in Iran's provinces. In this study, for estimation, the Fractional Panel Probit technique has been employed for the period of time from 2004 to 2014 and at the provincial level. The result of estimation for both groups shows a negative relationship between wage and labor demand that is consistent with labor demand theory. There is a positive effect for output-employment elasticity. The other result shows Cross elasticity of capital price and labor demand reveals a substitution effect in small firms. The demand for labor is reduced by increasing in taxes and value of raw materials. As Iran’s labor market is suffering from labor demand shortage and high unemployment, it is suggested that the economic policymaker should eliminate production barriers, care about increasing production capacity and facilitate the supply of raw materials.

The financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the cost of fiscal policy reform, increasingly revealed the importance of discussion on "government debt sustainability" in the economic literature. Accordingly, this paper examines government debt sustainability in the form of a Fiscal Reaction Function (FRF). To do so, a fiscal reaction function has been estimated using a Johansen Juselius cointegration method in Iran for the period 1971-2014. The results showed that the government's reaction was sustainable to the three types of debt (i.e., debt to the central bank, debt to domestic banks and non-bank financial institutions, and foreign debt). However, the small regression coefficients indicate a weak sustainability. In other words, as the public debt/GDP ratio increases, government does not respond by improving the primary balance. This problem, due to the impact of public debt on long-run economic growth through various channels can be an alarm for decision and policy makers. Also, findings confirm that fiscal policy in Iran is pro-cyclical. Therefore, it is recommended that, with the aim of creating a sustainable framework for fiscal policy, "debt sustainability" and "Business cycles" be considered as main variables in the objective function of fiscal policies in Iran.
MethodologyThe issue of “fiscal sustainability” has taken on special importance in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Although for fiscal sustainability is provided several definitions, almost all of these definitions are associated with fiscal policy. In a comprehensive definition, fiscal sustainability can be considered as a measure of fiscal dependence on the government's recent behaviors, compared to the last fiscal developments and changes in the macro-economic level. To empirically assess fiscal sustainability, the concept of “fiscal reaction function” can be used. Fiscal reaction functions usually specify, for annual data, the reaction of the primary balance/GDP ratio to changes in the one-period lagged public debt/GDP ratio, controlling for other influences. In other words, if the public debt/GDP ratio increases, government should respond by improving the primary balance, to arrest and even reverse the rise in the public debt/GDP ratio (Bohn, 1995, 2007). According to Burger, Stuart, Jooste and Cuevas (2011), the basic fiscal reaction function is in the following form:
Where:B/Y= Primary Balance/GDP
D/Y= Government Debt/GDP
=Output Gap
Government Debt/GDP is three types:Debt to the central bank/GDP (DCY)
Debt to domestic banks and non-bank financial institutions/GDP (DOY)
Foreign debt/GDP (DXY)
Results and discussionIn this section, we estimate fiscal reaction function using a Johansen Juselius cointegration method in Iran for the period 1971-2014. In the first step, the stationary of variables has been tested using the Ng-Perron and Lumsdaine and Papell tests. The results of stationary tests showed the four variables are non-stationary and only one variable is stationary. So the method of cointegration is a necessity. According to the results of unit root tests, fiscal reaction function has been estimated using a Johansen Juselius cointegration method. Johansen’s procedure builds cointegrated variables directly on maximum likelihood estimation instead of relying on OLS estimation. Finally, fiscal reaction function has been estimated as follows:Based on the estimated equation, it can be said that the government's reaction was sustainable to the three types of debt (debt to the central bank, debt to domestic banks and non-bank financial institutions and foreign debt). However, the small regression coefficients indicate a weak sustainability. Also, the positive coefficient of the output gap showed that fiscal policy in Iran is countercyclical.
ConclusionThe rapid build-up of government debt in an environment of financial instability and low growth has increased the need for an assessment of government debt sustainability. Accordingly, this paper examines government debt sustainability in the form of a fiscal reaction function (FRF). The results of the estimating Johansen Juselius cointegration method confirmed that fiscal policy was not sensitive to react to the accumulation of the government debt. Therefore, due to the impact of public debt on long-run economic growth through various channels, it is necessary that "debt sustainability" be considered as a main variable in the objective function of fiscal policies in Iran.

 This paper tries to measure the index of corruption by the Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes (MIMIC) approach in Iranian economy during the period of 1979-2014. For this purpose, the variables of growth of government size, type of governance system, political stability, the degree of openness and the oil rent as the causes of corruption and the variables of GDP growth and the ratio of savings to GDP as the effects of the corruption have been considered. The results indicate that the trend of corruption has been increasing in Iranian economy during the period of study.

The aim of this study is to investigate nonlinear effects of fiscal decentralization on inflation in the Hybrid New Keynesian Phillips curve framework in Iran. To meet this end, using the data of 30 provinces during 2005 to 2012 and Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR), the relationship between fiscal decentralization and inflation has been examined. The results show that the effect of fiscal decentralization on inflation is asymmetric and depends on the fiscal decentralization level; So that, by increasing the level of fiscal decentralization, the inflation rate was first reduced and then increased. The results of other parameters estimation also show that output gap, inflation lag and inflation expectations have a positive and asymmetric impact on the current inflation rate.