نشریه پژوهش های برنامه و توسعه
سال دوم شماره 4 (پیاپی 8، زمستان 1400)

In recent years, sustainable development has been considered by international communities as an important issue in changing management, promoting infrastructure and increasing capabilities of each country. Sustainable development has two components of “development and essentials of sustainability”, and sustainability is comprised of three major economic, social and environmental dimensions. Nowadays, due to increasing population, the world faces complex economic, social and environmental crises. Legal authorities are also pushing industries to pay attention to sustainability. Therefore, organizations and countries strive to improve their sustainability performance. Due to the importance of this subject, this paper developed SORM integrated data envelopment analysis model and SORM integrated inverse data envelopment analysis model to evaluate the sustainability of countries and to provide improvement values for more sustainability. In integrated SORM model, sustainability of 24 countries is calculated with simultaneous consideration regarding inputs and outputs. In the integrated inverse SORM model, optimal changes of inputs and outputs are presented, while efficiency or sustainability are kept unchanged. The optimal changes presented to countries have been in line with the goals of sustainable development and the goals pertaining to achieving long-term global development. Eventually, performance improvements in two countries, Germany and Iran, are compared. The results indicate the decrease or stability of undesirable inputs and outputs and the increase or stability of desirable inputs and outputs.

Public financial management is one of the most important tasks of governments that affects the efficiency of various sectors and economic and social situation of a country. In view of that, the establishment of treasury single account has been known as one of the most essential reforms in the financial management system and public expenditures in different countries. In this respect, this article evaluates treasury single account in Iran by using World Bank’s "Treasury Diagnostic Toolkit (questionnaire)". The toolkit has been completed by "Treasury Department of Iran", "Central Bank of the Islamic republic of Iran" and "Secretariat Executive Council of IT". The results of the evaluations demonstrate that the performance of the treasury single account in Iran is 67.4 percent; In other words, it is evaluated as relatively good. Furthermore, a detailed examination of this issue specifies the challenges in this area which can be resolved by correcting and regulating efficient laws and creating the required infrastructures. It is worth mentioning that the complete establishment of the treasury single account can fulfill the fifty-third principal constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Also, it can lead to greater coordination and interaction between the "Plan and Budget Organization of the Islamic Republic (PBO) and "Treasury Department".

Nowadays, environmental performance has attracted widespread attention, and it is mentioned that issues such as air pollution, global warming, habitat destruction, biodiversity threat, water scarcity crisis and desertification drastically threaten human future. The volume of oil and gas activities in the Persian Gulf countries are among the platforms that also highlight the attention to environmental performance in this area. Therefore, this article examines the effect of economic and non-economic factors affecting the environmental performance of the Persian Gulf countries. The economic factors that we selected to investigate are growth rate, degree of economic openness, energy intensity; and the non-economic factors we took into account are urbanization, democracy, population and financial development. Considering trade relations between the countries of the Persian Gulf, the spatial panel data model is used to take into account the effects of such interaction. We selected 8 Persian Gulf countries including Iran, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait for this article. To demonstrate the relationship between economic and non-economic factors for selected countries, we chose the period 1998-2018. The findings indicate significant spatial effects related to financial development, business openness and urbanization. Findings showed significant spatial effects related to financial development, business openness and urbanization.

The policy formulation stage is one of the important stages of the policy-making process that has significant effects on other stages. In development studies, the state is recoganized as an influential player in development policy procces. This research aims to identify and categorize the challenges of the formulation stage of development policies in Iran by viewing the from of five-year development programs. Research data were collected by a documentary method,  and by using purposeful sampling and thematic analysis. The challenges of development policies formulation in Iran have been categorized in five themes: 1) the nature of development policies 2) factors affecting development policies 3) the players of policy formulation stage 4) solutions presented in develpoment policeis 5) determination of the objectives in development policies. Explaining the challenges of development policies formulation in Iran can help policymakers and development policy analysts to overcome them in future policies.

Informal employment emerges and intensifies as industrialization and urbanization increased, leading to a lack of labor support. Starting with the expansion of urbanization and the creation of the informal economy, it is already remarkable to examine this issue from an economic point of view. Informality is one of the most important problems in the country's economy. This issue, in addition to affecting the personal life of the worker, including various aspects such as mentality and family, has important managerial/organizational, economic and social messages, so that it might be necessary to further define this field. This research has been done in identifying unofficial negative consequences and its method is descriptive-survey. The statistical sample of the research includes experts in related fields. Theme and Delphi analysis methods were used to analyze the data. The general results of the research indicate that its messages are identified at different levels of economic, managerial, social and psychological. To better understand the results of the research, the identified messages in the network of topics are also provided.

The hypothesis of financial convergence, as one of the upshots of neoclassical economic growth models, emphasizes the process of reducing the financial gap between countries, and in meantime, the speed of this convergence is of particular importance. Hence, the main purpose of this study is to test the financial convergence hypothesis, and to estimate the convergence rate using the dynamic panel technique in selected countries (separately for developed countries (38 countries) and developing countries (34 countries)) based on the generalized torque method (GMM) for the period 1992-2020. According to two models (the ratio of domestic credit to the private sector (percentage of GDP) and the ratio of working capital to GDP in the whole sample and group of developing and developed countries), the results implies the financial convergence in these countries. Also, the convergence rate in the first model is higher in developing countries than in developed countries. However, this speed is relatively higher in the second index of financial deepening (the ratio of money supply to GDP) ,and is adjusted in each period to a greater extent than short-term imbalances to achieve long-term equilibrium.