Massoud Karshenas

Global Poverty: National Accounts Based versus Survey Based Estimates

Examines methodological issues affecting the measurement and analysis of poverty in developing countries and discusses a new estimation method which attempts to provide poverty measures which are internationally comparable and are also consistent with national accounts statistics.

Female labor force participation and economic adjustment in the MENA region

This paper investigates the relationship between female labor force participation rates and structural adjustment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). We put forward a new hypothesis to explain MENAs low female labor force participation rates, and argue that during the oil boom era MENA countries locked themselves into family structures and female socio-economic roles which are not compatible with current economic realities in an era of globalization. We conclude that the socio-economic role of women can be an important missing link in explaining the puzzle of economic adjustment in the MENA region.

Oil, Economic Diversification and the Democratic Process in Iran

Since 1979, Iran has witnessed important socio-economic and institutional changes and has been affected by significant economic and political upheavals. These years have witnessed a succession of oil booms and busts, external war, trade sanctions and of course, more recently, heightened internal strife within the state. After 25 years, however, Irans political outlook seems opaque to most observers and the economic record is equally lacklustre with many Iranians experiencing a considerable retrogression in their living standards by regional and international standards.1 Since the second half of the 1990s and with the surfacing of a reformist faction within the ruling hierarchy, Iranian state has been beset by a divisive political struggle with different political factions openly competing for political and legislative supremacy. Partly as a consequence of this and partly because of Irans ability to live off its oil rent, the agenda for economic reform has often been put on the back burner, postponing the largely overdue modernization of Irans ailing economy.2 In this paper we argue that without fundamental economic and political reform the long term prospects of the Iranian economy will not be bright. First, we offer

Concepts and measurement of agricultural surplus: A new accounting framework with application to Iran

A new accounting framework for the measurement of intersectoral resource flows is presented. Different definitions of agricultural surplus are discussed and the conceptual and measurement problems ...

Relative Prices and the International Comparison of Real Agricultural Output and Productivity

This article reviews the different methods of constructing multilateral output and productivity indices for agriculture in cross‐country panel studies. We show that various multilateral output indices used by different researchers can have considerable disparities, thus rendering the comparison of the final results problematic. The production indices produced by the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) are increasingly used by researchers as a unique source of data for cross‐country panel studies. The article examines the properties of the FAO index, and finds them deficient in paying little attention to the problem of loss of characteristicity in a highly heterogeneous panel. It is shown that the FAO production indices lead to unacceptably large deviations from domestically based production indices in the case of low‐income countries. It is argued further that the use of the FAO production index can lead to spurious results in econometric studies of the links between productivity growth, per capita income, and price levels.

Structural Adjustment and the Iranian Economy

Over the past twenty years Iran’s relative ranking in the world economy has declined considerably. Comprehensive institutional reform is essential if this process of economic retrogression is to be reversed and sustainable growth achieved. This chapter identifies the needed reforms by studying the ill-fated reforms of the First Five-Year Plan. Contrary to the claim frequently made by critics of economic reform, Iran’s current economic problems are not due to the excesses of economic liberalization and price adjustments under the plan, but rather to the reforms not being sufficiently far-reaching. A number of complementary institutional reforms are suggested as neccessary prerequisites for the success of any future price reform and liberalization program.