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Political Institutions and Government Spending Behavior in Iran

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  • Sajjad Faraji Dizaji
  • Mohammad Reza Farzanegan

Abstract

This study examines how quality of political institutions affects the distribution of government budget and how development of government spending in major sections shapes the political institutions in Iran. This question has become especially important due to recent international sanctions, aiming to change the political behavior of Iran. We use the impulse response functions (IRF) and variance decomposition analysis (VDC) on the basis of Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model with annual data from 1960 to 2006. Our results show the importance of political institutions in patronage and public goods provision spending in Iran. The results imply that a shock in positive changes of democratic quality of institutions leads to negative and statistically significant response of military spending and positive and statistically significant response of education expenditures in short term. If sanctions are successful to change the political behavior of Iran in short run (Dizaji and Bergeijk, 2013), then one can also expect to see a reduction in allocated budget for military in Iran.

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  • Sajjad Faraji Dizaji & Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, 2014. "Political Institutions and Government Spending Behavior in Iran," CESifo Working Paper Series 4620, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4620
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    Cited by:

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    4. Mohammad Reza Farzanegan & Mohammad Habibpour, 2014. "Direct Distribution of Rents and the Resource Curse in Iran: A Micro-econometric Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 4824, CESifo.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    political institutions; government spending; Iran; VAR modelling; sanctions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East
    • O43 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Institutions and Growth

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