احسان رسولی نژاد

The challenge of environmental pollution and climate change have made countries to develop energy transition progress to move from non-renewable energy sources towards renewable ones. This paper seeks to consider energy transformation process and analyze its pattern in Iran by modeling through the ARDL bounding testing method over the period of 1993-2018. The empirical estimations depicted that in the long-run economic growth and inflation rate negatively impact on energy transformation of Iran, while increase in carbon dioxide emissions and appreciation of Iran’s national currency accelerate the energy transition process in Iran. Regarding the short-run relationship, the major results represented an evidence of positive impact of exchange rate on Iran’s energy transition process, while the other variables have negative coefficient. As a major concluding remark, for the case of Iran, the findings prove that the influential impacts of explanatory variables on energy transformation are stronger in long-run rather than in short-run. Therefore, the presence of efficient long-run energy planning is recommended.

This paper aims to show the asymmetric effect of oil shocks on Iran’s economy. It uses nonlinear time series models to investigate the asymmetric effect of oil shocks on resource allocation in Iran’s economy. The results show that adverse oil shocks have been more persistent during the last decades and severely negatively affect resource allocation in Iran’s economy. Different oil shocks have different implications for importing and exporting countries, and the rigidity of state fiscal systems in exporting countries causes adverse oil shocks to be more persistent. The oil economy’s response to positive and negative oil shocks depends on the structure of the economy. The government budget and trade balance have significant implications for the effects of oil shocks on oil-exporting economies. The government budget is highly dependent on oil revenues, so in the case of adverse oil shocks, the pass-through exchange rate will cause high inflation because of foreign exchange shortage and overshoot in the exchange rate. 

It is generally accepted that COVID-19 is one of the most serious challenges the countries have faced since the end of World War II. The coronavirus, as an external shock has reshaped economic structures and lowered integration among countries. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of COVID-19 on the globalization level of countries, which were classified into five Asian regions based on the United Nations geoscheme. To this end, an econometric method of estimation is employed based on the quarterly data pertaining to the study’s variables from 2010 to 2020. Results indicate that the pandemic has had a more severe negative impact on the globalization level of more developed countries in Asia, whereas it has had a smaller negative impact on less developed regions, such as those located in Central Asia. In this regard, Japan and China can be named as two economies in which the Coronavirus has had a greater negative impact on the level of globalization. It can be highlighted that the pandemic and its related consequences, such as protectionism (trade and capital de-liberalism) and travel restrictions are not considered as potential threats for all Asian countries. What constitutes a threat for various countries depends on the country’s economic nature, political stability, economic size, and globalization nature. Therefore, for globalization recovery, no unique pattern could be applied to all Asian countries, each having to determine useful practical policies based on its  economic mechanism and interactions with respect to both regional and global variables. 

Making an agreement between Iran and an integrated countries bloc like Shanghai Cooperation Organization or Eurasian Economic Union to boost energy trade is considered as an efficient factor to improve multilateralism and regionalism of Iranian economy. However, the outbreak of COVID-19 has had caused serious and unprecedented consequences on globalization and regionalization. This research seeks to find out the relationship between COVID19 and regional energy integration for two cases of South Asia and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). To estimate the coefficients of variables, the panel data framework based on quarterly data over 2010Q1-2020Q2 is employed. The major results reveal that the COVID19 pandemic is found to be a serious challenge for regional energy integration in these two unions, particularly the integration of larger economies which are more developed and have a higher level of trade liberalization are disturbed by this pandemic. A policy implication based on the conclusions is that Iran may try to make regional energy integration with its neighbors and trading partners. However, to reduce the long-run negative impacts of pandemic, Iran and its energy trade partners should make a plan to determine types and magnitudes of negative impacts of pandemic, regulating monetary and fiscal policies to encounter with the negative influences. To the best of author’s knowledge, despite some earlier researches, there is not any existing literature focusing on how the Corona affects the economic integration. Therefore, this paper tries to fill in this literature gap.