Resource-rich economies and ethnically divided societies are linked to higher income inequality at the macro level. Our goal is to empirically examine the income inequality and welfare effects of the direct distribution of resource rents and subsequent taxation in Iran. We use rich micro survey...

Studies on the relationship between religion and Entrepreneurship suggest that Islam discourages entrepreneurship. This is sometimes used to explain the excessively high unemployment figures for Muslim majority countries. However, we argue that studies that support this claim have missed a...

This study aims to simulate the future trends of carbon emissions under different international sanction scenarios in Iran. A System Dynamics (SD) model is developed and several variables that capture multiple levels of economic, social, and environmental concepts are taken into account. Our...

We examine the response of the news-based Corruption Reflection Index (CRI) to positive shocks in oil revenues in Iran. Using annual data from 1962 to 2019, we employ the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model and analyze impulse response functions. Our findings reveal a positive and significant...

We examine the relationship between household income and happiness in Afghanistan and the moderating roles of fear of insecurity and experiencing violence. Our study is based on surveys conducted by the Asia Foundation from 2014 to 2021 across 34 provinces in Afghanistan. Employing fixed effects...

With a representative survey of 1,214 participants conducted in early 2022, this study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on marriage and childbirth in Iran. The results of the empirical investigation using logistic regressions suggest that the experience of unemployment due to the...

Improving energy efficiency is vital for curtailing energy consumption and can have substantial impacts on alleviating carbon emissions. This study investigates the impact of sanctions on Iran's energy efficiency across different industrial sub-sectors from 2015 to 2019. We compute a sanctions...

We investigate the effects of US-imposed trade sanctions on the global trade patterns of sanctioned countries by employing a gravity model that incorporates data spanning from 1980 to 2020 across 79 nations and other various factors, this study explores how sanctions impact trade dynamics. The...

This study examines the relationship between firms' political connections and their confidence in achieving enhanced future sales. Using firm-level survey data from selected Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries, we apply ordered probit regressions to demonstrate that businesses with...

Resource-rich countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have the highest youth unemployment rate in the world. While other parts of the world are experiencing an increasing trend in new firms' formation as a potential solution for their unemployment problem, the MENA region has the...