مطالب

  This paper examines impact of trade liberalization on industrial growth of India. The research problem is expressed as €œTo what extent does trade liberalization or openness of the economy influence industrial growth of India?€ To identify the impacts of trade liberalization, total time period, 1970-2010, is divided into two sub periods of before trade liberalization i.e. (1970 to 1990) and after trade liberalization i.e. (1991 to 2010). The variables identified in the main objective of the study are tested hypothetically, and quantitative analytical methods are applied to make accurate and reliable conclusions. Graphical presentations and regression analyses are used to assess the degree of relationships among variables concerned. Further to test the structural changes in the country, the Chow test is applied. Findings of the study confirm that there is no evidence that the structural changes in industrial growth rates have been happened during the last four decades due to trade liberalization in India. JEL Classification: F14, F13, F14, L52

The pursuit of sustainable development requires balancing the objectives of FDI, Trade, economic growth and environmental protection. Achieving a balance between these often-conflicting priorities is difficult enough at the national level, where competing interests are at least grounded in a common environmental, social and economic context. At the international level, where different countries have vastly different circumstances and priorities, it is significantly harder. One of the many ways in which this challenge manifests itself in the real world is in the conflict between the desire to promote trade by reducing non-tariff barriers and the desire to protect the environment and health through the use of technical regulations and standards.   As competition becomes more global, people are concerned that relatively lenient environmental regulation and lax enforcement in developing countries give them a comparative advantage in pollution intensive goods. Lowering trade barrier may encourage a relocation of polluting industries from countries with strict environmental policy to those with lenient policy. These shifts may increase global pollution, as countries become reluctant to tighten environmental regulations due of their concerns over comparative advantage in international trade. Therefore, trade and FDI may encourage a relocation of polluting industries from countries with strict environmental policy to those with less stringent policy. We call this a pollution haven effect. The pattern of trade depends on which of these effects is stronger. The aim of this paper is to test the validation of the hypothesis of the pollution haven effect on water created by the different industries in the selected countries of Europe and Asia.   Overall, our results show that trade liberalization decreases the BOD emission crated by chemical, food, metal, paper and pulp, textile, wood and other industries but it increases this emission crated by clay and glass industry in the selected EU-Asian countries. JEL Classification : Q51, Q56.

Painted rocks may be considered the oldest manifestation of art in human society. The history of this art is estimated to be more than 30 thousand years. This art has also a long history in Iran. This article introduces one of these rock art sites i.e. Ghalat Niloo which is located in Kazeroon County, south-east of Ghalat Niloo village. The purpose of this study is to identify and determine the location, the function of concepts, the history, classification and relationship of these designs with similar samples available from other areas. These designs have been engraved on the walls of the caves and include subjects such as hunting, human on horseback with a bow in hand, animal images mostly goats and in one case a dog. They probably date back to the 1 st Millennium BC.

Job creation, income generation, and natural resources conservation, all are pillars of sustainable development for industries using new technologies. Despite the importance of new technologies, developing countries face many limitations, such as economic and political problems, which make the development and transfer of technologies more difficult. In this study, we focus on development of new technologies in Iran’s petrochemical industry, including nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, and membranes. Solutions are proposed to improve the current unsatisfactory status. For that matter, taking into account experts’ viewpoints, a new technology tree is suggested for Iran’s petrochemical industry. The literature on technology assessment and prioritization is reviewed, and then primary indicators are proposed based on ability, attractiveness, and patent features. Forty industry experts are surveyed and the results are analyzed using face validity, reliability test, and factor analysis, by which the current status of new technologies is assessed.

In this paper, factors that effect on ICT adoption by SMEs in Tehran (Iran) are investigated. To do so, after reviewing the literature, we identified the factors affecting ICT adoption by SMEs in Tehran and, based on this review, we proposed our hypotheses. Factors include internal factors, external factors and ICT specifications that influence on IT adoption by SMEs. All hypotheses are confirmed except the one that articulates the relationship between perceived ease of use and ICT adoption by SMEs. Weak managerial support, lack of available skills, weak strategic vision regarding the ICT, weak innovative environment and insufficient financial resources are among the internal barriers. External barriers include weak governmental supports, legal environment, low cultural acceptance and weak pressures from customers, suppliers and competitors. Finally, low perceived usefulness and compatibility are among the ICT specifications that limit ICT adoption by SMEs.

The Realization Optimality Theory is a recent development in the original Optimality Theory which is proposed to deal with morphological issues especially the inflectional ones. Its main idea is to consider the morphological realization rules as ranked violable language-specific constraints that control the realization processes and provide phonological information of grammatical morphemes. This article deals with the investigation of some morphosyntactic (inflectional) features of modern Persian in Realization Optimality Theory, and shows among the other things that it is a better model for treating inflection than the original Optimality Theory, but it still faces some problems with regard to a language like Modern Persian in which some morphosyntactic features are treated differently in formal and informal varieties, hence separate tableaux with different rankings of constraints are sometimes needed in order to select the optimal candidates in each of those varieties.