Structural Change

It is a well-established empirical fact that economic growth and development brings about major changes in sectorial output, employment, and consumption structure. In the context of economic development discussion, structural change refers to the change in key components of macroeconomic indicators, including national production and expenditure, exports and imports, population, and the sectorial composition of labor. Considering the importance of human capital for economic growth and development, the most important of the above factors is the labor market and the sectorial composition of employment. Another important dimension of economic development is economic well-being. In this study, we formulated and calculated two indicators called the Coefficient of Structural Change of Iran (CSCI) and the Index of Economic Well-Being of Iran (IEWBI), and then used the vector autoregressive (VAR) modeling method and the software EViews v.10 to analyze the impact of structural changes of Iranian economy on IEWBI. The results indicate the positive effect of structural changes and therefore development policies on the economic well-being of Iran when the weighting scheme of IEWBI was biased in favor of the consumption flow dimension, and the negative effect in other cases. JEL: C39, I31, O11.

Structural change plays an important role in developing any economy, so understanding it is critical to make policies that increase total factor productivity. The structural change that leads to an efficient resource allocation after trade reforms is desirable; the key factor that can affect the relation of "structural change and trade liberalization" with productivity is the quality of institutions. In this study, we first use the principal component method to propose a multidimensional index for structural change and then apply the ARDL econometrics model to evaluate the effect of trade liberalization and structural changes on total factor productivity in Iran during 1991- 2018. The results show that structural changes increase the total factor productivity, and trade liberalization has a positive and significant effect on total factor productivity in the short term. Our results also indicate that there is no long-run relationship in this period.