Jahangir Amuzegar

Iran's economy under the Islamic Republic

Part I Introduction - the Iranian economy on the eve of the revolution. Part II The Islamic Republics politico-economic agenda: the search for an Islamic economic order the ideological framework of the economy. Part III Macro-economic trends: national output and income population, labor force, and employment wages, prices and inflation. Part IV National economic policies: national budget and fiscal policy banking and monetary policy planning and development policy foreign trade and exchange policy. Part V Main economic sectors: agriculture - farming, fisheries and forestry industry and related services - manufacturing, construction, water and power, transport and communications hydrocarbons - oil, gas and petrochemicals. Part VI Performance and prospects: the economys balance sheet from revolutionary slogans to economic reality.

OPEC and the dollar dilemma

New instability in the international monetary system has developed since the dollars depreciation began raising concerns that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will turn to a currency with a better exchange value. OPEC losses between December 1976 and April 1978 are calculated for trade depreciation and loss of buying power. The options available to OPEC to counteract this situation are examined, and remedies are suggested for enhancing confidence in the U.S. dollar through free trade activities and intervention policies. The major industrial countries are advised to coordinate their policies to allow noninflationary growth in a free market and to form an accommodative agreement with OPEC that will protect both oil revenues and the dollar.

The North-South Dialogue: From Conflict to Compromise

THE conflict between the poor developing nations living in the Southern Hemisphere and the rich industrial countries of the North has entered a new phase in recent months. At long last the countries of the world are coming seriously to grips with the growing material inequalities between a handful of affluent nations in North America, Western Europe and Japan (which account for less than 18 percent of the world population but more than 60 percent of world income), and the scores of poor countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America which constitute the bulk of humanity but enjoy very little of the earths bounty. The North-South struggle, brewing for years, had its first climactic manifestation in the 1971-72 negotiations between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and the multinational oil com panies for a higher crude oil price. OPECs success in its first real bargaining with the companies put the geo-economics of petroleum at the very center of world politics. The oil price adjustments of 1973-74, and the consequences of the Arab oil embargo, made the world realize?however reluctantly and painfully?that the inev itable had finally occurred. The blissful era of plentiful and ridic ulously cheap hydrocarbon fuels from the Middle East came to a fateful end.