Manipulation of money, the effect of weak rule of law or its cause: Toda and Yamamoto causality

One of the important issues of Iran's economy in the last half century has been the high growth of liquidity, which shows the manipulation of money by the government and monetary authorities. One view considers the weakness of the rule of law as the cause of this problem, but another view states the causal relationship in the opposite direction and believes that money and the benefits derived from it are a factor in weakening the rule of law. Theoretically, there is a bilateral relationship between money creation and the rule of law. On the one hand, it is the laws that determine how much money should be created, the extent powers of monetary authorities, and how its benefits are distributed. On the other hand, the growth of liquidity and inflation take the structure of the economy out of the free market process and affect the rule of law. This study seeks to investigate the causal relationship, the existence of a long-term relationship and the type of relationship between these two variables in Iran using data from the rule of law index and liquidity in the period 1996-2020 with Toda and Yamamoto causality method, band test and autoregression vector method. It was concluded that the volume of liquidity in Iran has been a factor in weakening the rule of law.