Original Research Articles

The Effect of Exports on Employment in Iran’s Economy

Monireh Dizaji and Arash Ketabforoush Badri*

Department of Economics, Tabriz branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

*Corresponding Author's E-mail: arashkbadri@gmail.com; Tel.: +98-09148059607

Accepted May 19, 2014

Abstract

Employment has been one of the key issues for countries in recent decades. Employment can have far-reaching effects on social, political and economic relations in any society, so the improvement of employment in a society can lead to growth and development, as well as solving current issues. Therefore, identifying influential factors on employment and the mechanism of the influence is of importance. Numerous factors such as export and wage level can influence employment and unemployment rate. An increase in export would increase demand, and this would lead to an increase in wage levels and employment. By encouraging export, domestic products would enter international competition for growth, and from this viewpoint, free trade through static and dynamic interests would lead to an increase in production and economic welfare. Therefore, this study analyses the effect of export on total employment in Iran via autoregressive-distributed lag modelling for 1976-2005. The results of the estimations reveal that in the studied period, export and wages had a positive and significant effect on Iran employment in long term and exchange rate and long term interest rate had negative effect on employment.

Keywords: Export, Employment, ARDL, Economy, Iran.
JEL Code: C22- F31-O53-N30- J30.