Estimating the Volume of Goods Smuggling Using Structural Equations and its Impact on Economic Growth in Iran: An Empirical Study in the Last Half Century

Examining the factors affecting the smuggling of goods as well as its effects on macroeconomic variables has been one of the most important issues in the field of macroeconomics. Examining this issue and its results has an important role in policy making in the field of goods smuggling. Considering this issue, the purpose of this article is to investigate the economic smuggling of goods as one of the obstacles to production using an empirical approach. Therefore, in this study, in addition to estimating the volume of smuggling in Iran during the period from 1971 to 2020, and investigating its impact on the gross domestic product, structural equation modeling was used. The findings of this study show that the average volume of goods smuggling in the period under review was about 22.53% of the official GDP. Also, based on other results of this study, smuggling as an obstacle to production has had a negative and significant impact on GDP at the 95% confidence level over the past 50 years.