sahar dashtban farooji

The study of Iran's position in the international trade network of natural gas shows that although Iran is the second country with natural gas resources in the world and has a special position in the transit of natural gas, it is not an important player in the international trade network of natural gas. One of the most important issues for the development of international gas trade is to examine the possibility of exporting Iran's natural gas in the near future. The present study tries to estimate and simulate an econometric model including macroeconomic and energy variables, analyze the outlook of domestic demand and balance of natural gas in different conditions of Iran's macroeconomics, and assess the feasibility of exporting natural gas. The simulation of different scenarios for the period 2022-2032 shows three findings. Firstly, continuing the current policies result in the undesirable trend of the TFP at the macroeconomic level and economic inefficiency in the energy sector. Secondly, macroeconomic policy reforms in order to raise economic growth result in a negative natural gas balance. Thirdly, for the reduction of energy intensity, the energy price reform is not a sufficient policy, and emphasizing the non-price factors towards technical progress in order to rise energy efficiency is important. In addition, making an investment decision for infrastructure development of potential natural gas supply is important as a necessary condition.

In order to investigate the effect of the devaluation of the national currency on the net export of Iran's economy, the two-stage least squares method was used, considering Iran's special conditions, in the generalized Marshall Lerner conditional equation. The results show simple Marshall Lerner condition is not appropriate for examining the effects of exchange rate variation on the trade balance of the Iranian economy due to its assumptions. This condition, only, consider the demand for exports and imports. Since about 85% of Iran's imports include intermediate and capital goods, the effect of the exchange rate directly affects the cost of output and this has significant effects on the prices and elasticities of export goods. Therefore, it is necessary to amend this condition according to the specific conditions of the Iranian economy. In this paper, the extension Marshall Lerner condition in Iran for the period of 1981-2020 has been estimated. The results show that this condition is not met for Iran's economy. Therefore, the policy of devaluation of the national currency does not have a significant effect on the improvement of the country's trade balance, and the economic policy maker should consider other solutions to increase exports. The policy makers must find an alternative solution to increase exports. For example, consider export diversification to improve export performance.

The purpose of this study is to identify and prioritize export target markets for Iran’s natural gas over a 20-year perspective for the period 2020-2040, using the numerical taxonomy method. In this method we use the indicators of countries' distance from Iran, per capita income, per capita consumption of natural gas and economic growth. The results of this study show that the regions of the Middle East, OECD Europe, Non-OECD Europe and Eurasia and Non-OECD Asia are in order the best target markets for Iranian natural gas.

Increasing growth in demand for natural gas and its dispersal in the world will causes to the growing dependence of countries with natural gas consumption on international natural gas trade, thus increasing competition among natural gas exporters in terms of volume and scope. therefore, a complex network of trade relations between countries has been created and the interactions between them have been developed. The aim of this study is to analyze the position of countries in the international natural gas trade network by using graph theory. In this research, the international natural gas trade network in 2018 has been examined separately by two HS codes. The distinguishing feature of this article is that all countries are included in the international natural gas trade network. Analysis of the network based on various indicators shows that although Iran is the second largest holder of natural gas resources in the world and has a special position in the transit of natural gas, but is not an important player in the international trade network of natural gas. In addition, according to the Closeness Centrality Index, Singapore, the United Kingdom and Italy have the highest Closeness Centrality Index, and as a result, have been more successful in establishing trade relations with other countries in the network. Also, countries like Norway and Russia as the largest exporters of natural gas, have less Closeness.  Therefore, other criteria, such as having diverse trade relationships, are decisive in the natural gas trade network. The results also show that in the liquid natural gas trade network, the network density is relatively higher than the network density through the pipeline because the pipeline infrastructure is located under geographic constraints, diplomatic relations and political factors while natural gas trade has a relatively more flexibility. With the increasing demand and supply resources in international natural gas trade supply in the future, liquefied natural gas is likely to become the most important form of natural gas trade.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of financial integration on macroeconomic volatility in Iran. Economic theories do not clearly explian the effects of financial integration on macroeconomic volatility and this is essentially an empirical problem. Hence, we have presented an empirical model to test the effect of international financial integration on macroeconomic volatility in Iran over the period 1352-1395. For this purpose, first, the macroeconomic uncertainty was extracted using stochastic volatility model with leverage effects and using the principal component analysis method. The results show that in the long run, international financial development, international financial integration and terms of trade volatility have a positive effect on macroeconomic volatility in Iran, while the effect of trade openness on macroeconomic volatility in Iran is negative. In addition, in the short run, there is no significant relationship between the relevant variables and macroeconomic volatility.

With the expansion of the tourism industry, many countries have been able to improve their economic situation and resolve their economic problems, such as low per capita income, high unemployment and lack of foreign exchange earnings. Since tourism creates a very good source of income for a country, it can be considered as an industry. So, this results in a very broad concept in various economic, social and cultural dimensions. Therefore, this study examines the effect of exchange rate volatility on tourism flows in Iran based on seasonal and annual data during 1368-1394. For this, first, the real exchange rate uncertainty is extracted using stochastic volatility model with leverage effects. Then, to investigate the effect of real exchange rate volatility on the flow of tourism, we will use Mixed frequency Data Sampling (MIDAS) approach. The results showed that the increase of real exchange rate volatility as well as the increase of GDP have negative and positive effects, respectively, on the arrival of foreign tourists to Iran.

Population age structure is a main factor affecting government consumption expenditure. This paper examines the effects of changes in population age structure on government consumption expenditure by using a Mixed Frequency Data Sampling (MIDAS) approach. The estimation results indicate that population age structure are of positive and significant effects on government consumption expenditure. In addition, government consumption expenditure is forecasted for 2014. To assess the predictive power of the model, the actual data in 2014 was not used. The expenditure forecasted by the model is 1437079 billion Rials, and corresponding real value is 1438316 billion Rials. This indicates the goodness of fit of model.

Economic growth is the most important symbol of government, so economists are trying to better and more accurate to understand dynamics and factors influencing changes in this indicator. Policymakers can help to improve it. In this study, the relationship between economic growth, development of the banking sector and some macroeconomic variables was investigated using Panel-VAR method. For this purpose panel data of D8 countries during period of 2008-2013 has been used. For development of banking sector indicators of money supply, rate of credit to private sector and credit to banking sector and macroeconomic variables are involved, foreign direct investment, trade openness, inflation and government spending.
The results of this paper indicate that amount of credit to the banking sector and credit to the private sector had negative effect on economic growth. The broad moneysupply, foreign direct investment and trade openness has a positive effect on economic growth and the effect of foreign direct investment is more than other variables in D8 countries in our period.