درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Iran attempts to expand the non-oil exportsfor diminishing the dependency on oil export income. This research tries to examine the export and trade balance of Iran's agricultural sector. Accordingly, the gravity model was used for export, applying panel data from 1997 to 2017. Also, the trade balance of Iran's total agricultural and the related sectors’commodities was examined. It should be noted that for the trade balance, time series data from 1978 to 2018 were used. The results of the gravity model show a negative effect for the variable of distance. The coefficients of Iran’s per capita GDP and also the GDP of trading partners are positive, as expected. It was found that a one percent increase in the per capita GDP of Iran causes a rise of 3.42 percent in the export of agricultural products; however,that of importing countries haslow statistical significance. Based on the coefficient obtained for the population, an increase in the population of the importing countries raises the demand for Iran's agricultural products.The degree of trade openness revealed a positive and significant effect on the export of agricultural products. The coefficient for the real exchange rate was found to be around 0.9 percent. It was also found that the volatility of the exchange rate is related directly to the export of agricultural products. Comprehensive sanctions have a negative and significant effect, while less restricting sanctions have an insignificant effect on the export of agricultural products. The global economic crisis has also had a dampening effect on exports. For trade balance, the results show that the value added of the agriculture has a positive effect on the trade balance of entire agriculture and sectors. The real exchange rate has a negative effect on the trade balance of agricultural commodities as a whole and livestock and agronomy sectors, confirming the J-Curve theory while it was not supported for the horticultural sector. Also, the variable of exchange rate volatility was included in the model using two measures of positive and negative series of exchange rate changes and the Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (ARCH) effect, but their effect on the trade balance was not the same in terms of both the direction and statistical significance. The trade openness for the agricultural and horticultural sector was found with a positive coefficient, indicating that their production is based on comparative advantage. However, for the sectors of agronomy and livestock, it illustrated a negative effect. Sanctions have also harmed the trade balance.

Environment quality and its determinants are one of the main challenges of the present and future of humanity and sustainable development is interpreted in the direction of preserving and improving the environment. In recent years, many studies have been conducted on the factors affecting environmental quality. One of the main topics that have been less considered in the related studies is the impact of governance on the quality of the environment. In this study, the impact of good governance components, including economic freedom, trade freedom, and political freedom, on the Environmental Performance Index (EPI) and its sub-indices including environmental health, ecosystem vitality, and climate change is investigated. The data required for statistical analysis are related to Middle East and North Africa region countries and Turkiye (MENAT) during 2000-2021. The panel data method was used to estimate the model and examine the relationship between the variables. The findings show that there is a positive and significant relationship between economic freedom and political freedom with the environmental performance index (EPI), and there is no significant relationship between trade freedom and EPI. </span>In addition, the study found that economic freedom had a detrimental effect on ecosystem vitality and climate change, leading to negative impacts in these areas. However, it had a positive impact on environmental health, indicating that it contributed positively to this aspect. On the other hand, political freedom was observed to have a positive effect on the vitality of the ecosystem and climate change. However, it did not have a significant impact on the overall health of the environment, suggesting that its influence was more prominent in specific areas related to ecosystem vitality and climate change. <span style="layout-grid-mode: line;" data-mce-fragment="1">The result of this research showed that economic freedom has led to more investment in the oil and gas sector of MENA countries, and therefore wastewater and gas emissions have had a negative impact on the vitality of the environment and climate change, but with the increase in production and sales of oil and Gas, per capita income of countries has increased, and environmental health has improved. Also, considering that political freedom among the MENA region has a lot of diversity, the results showed that the countries with more political freedom, through greater awareness of the society and more accountability of the governments and the establishment of environmental protection laws, had a positive impact on the environment. Of course, the environmental health index is more influenced by the economic situation and per capita production of countries and political freedom has little effect on it.