نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
نویسندگان
1 دانشیار اقتصاد، دانشکده اقتصاد و مدیریت، دانشگاه سیستان و بلوچستان
2 دانشجوی دکتری اقتصاد، دانشکده اقتصاد و مدیریت، دانشگاه سیستان و بلوچستان
3 استاد اقتصاد، پژوهشگاه علوم انسانی و مطالعات فرهنگی
چکیده
کلیدواژه‌ها
موضوعات
عنوان مقاله [English]
نویسندگان [English]
Introduction: In recent years, the use of financial sanctions has been unprecedented. Financial sanctions aim to exert economic pressure in order to change the political behavior and the performance of governments under sanction. The economic sanctions were imposed on Iran's economy in 2006, and further restrictions were put on Iran's access to the financial network of the United States. The financial sanctions were intensified in 2011 under the pretext of nuclear and human rights issues. Sanctions also reduced the share of capital expenditures in the budget and the government expenditures for safety net. When the government faced a budget deficit and the imports became more expensive, the resulting inflation increased the cost of living for the low-income groups. Therefore, financial sanctions adversely affected the poor due to the disruption of financial flows. Generally, during sanctions, the government budget deficit can deteriorate income inequality. Sanctions can not only block the financial transactions of a country and deter investments but also pose trade barriers; it leads to increased challenges in paying for exports and imports. Financial sanctions also affect imports because they impede the transfer of money, which leads to a shortage of one or more goods. In these circumstances, the sanctioned country tries to replace the import of goods from other countries in order to circumvent the sanctions; But this also causes a shortage of goods and increases their prices. Thus, economic sanctions reduce the supply of necessary goods. Rising prices, especially commodity and food prices, in turn, can increase inequality.
Sanctions reduce the import of health and pharmaceutical products, and, as a result, citizens' access to these goods is reduced; most of all, the vulnerable segments of the population are affected, especially women, children and the elderly people.
Sanctions on imports through capital goods and intermediaries reduce domestic production, employment and income, which leads to an increase in absolute poverty and a reduction in exports of labor-intensive goods. This, in turn, reduces the level of income and employment in the target country and leads to increased inequality.
In Iran, the decline in non-oil exports happened by the above-mentioned mechanism. in addition to it, there occurred reductions in oil exports and the government foreign exchange revenues. Sanctions have strong effects on economic aspects, including reduced government investment, depreciated exchange rates, declined government spending and possibly reduced safety net payments. These changes can increase inequality.
Methodology: We examined the impact of financial sanctions on income inequality in Iran over the period of 1991-2017. To this end, we used a Factor Augmented Vector Auto-Regression (FAVAR) model with time varying parameters (TVP). We utilized MATLAB 2016 to estimate the econometric model. FAVAR models with time-varying parameters provide an estimate of the financial sanctions proxy variable (oil revenues) and then indicate the response functions in the foreign debts of the central bank, liquidity, economic growth, informal exchange rates, inflation and unemployment.
Results and Discussion: Iran's economy has been exposed to economic shocks emanating from financial sanctions and represented by a proxy that shows the oil revenues fluctuation. A corresponding model was used to provide an analysis of the impacts of the financial sanctions on the Gini coefficient. Over time, due to the changes in the coefficients of the variables in the FAVAR structural model, it was possible to analyze the effects of the shock on the economic conditions using time-varying parameters (TVPs).
Conclusion: Nonlinear behavior indicates the effectiveness of variables on the Gini coefficient. Thus, economic growth improves the Gini coefficient over time, but the other variables adversely affect it. Given that the financial sanctions adversely affected the inflation rate, exchange rate and unemployment as well as increased the foreign debts of the central bank, it can be concluded that the sanctions aggravated the Gini coefficient and increased income inequality. In fact, the increasing financial sanctions prevented the transfer of oil revenues and the import of staple goods. It also raised the inflation rate which led to the higher inequality of income distribution. Therefore, the sanctions adversely affected the Gini coefficient and inequality in Iran.
کلیدواژه‌ها [English]
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