We examine the effects of oil price shocks on unemployment rates in the MENA oil-exporting and oil-importing countries over the period 1991-2017. Using the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model, the results show that in the short-run, the positive changes of oil prices only...

This study examines the relationship between access to finance and growth in sales for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in Iran. Using data from 486 firms in five provinces, our findings indicate that external financing positively impacts sales growth for MSMEs. The results suggest...

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...