This paper examines causal relationships between investment in transport and communication (TC) by public funding and GDP for Iran using annual data over the period 1970-2014. A three-variable model is formulated with oil revenues as the third variable to empirically examine the long-run co-movement between these variables based on the Gregory-Hansen (1996) cointegration technique, allowing for the presence of potential structural breaks in data. The results suggest that there is a long-run relationship between these variables. The Granger Causality test indicates strong unidirectional effects from oil revenues and GDP to TC. But there is no evidence that TC promotes long-term economic growth. Moreover, the main results in this paper confirm that there is an instantaneous as well as unidirectional causal link running from oil revenues and GDP to TC. The results is attributed to rent seeking activities, low productivity and mass of unfinished or long-delayed development projects, particularity during the oil booms.
1. Abdullah H., 2000. The Relationship between Government Expenditure and Economic Growth in Saudi Arabia. Journal of Administrative Science, 12(2), pp.173-191.
2. Al-Yousif Y., 2000. Does Government Expenditure Inhibit or Promote Economic Growth: Some Empirical Evidence from Saudi Arabia. Indian Economic Journal, 48(2).
3. Cooray A, 2009. Government Expenditure, Governance and Economic Growth. Comparative Economic Studies, 51(3):401-418. [http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/pal/ces;jsessionid=q1g8lgkzfvms.alice]
4. Dickey, D., Fuller W., 1979. Distribution of the Estimators for Autoregressive Time Series with a Unit Root, Journal of the American Statistical Association 74, pp. 427-431.
5. Dickey, D. A., W. A. Fuller, 1981. Likelihood Ratio Statistics for Autoregressive Time Series with a Unit Root, Econometrica 49, pp. 1057-1072.
6. Engle, R.F. and Granger, C.W.J. (1987) Cointegration and error-correction: Representation, estimation and testing. Econometrica, 55(2), pp. 987-1008.
7. Granger, C. W. J., 1969. Investigating Causal Relations by Econometric Models and Cross-spectral Methods, Econometrica 37 (3), pp. 424-438.
8. Granger, C. W. J., 1988. Some recent developments in a concept of causality, Journal of Econometrics 39, pp. 199–211.
9. Gregory, Allan W., Hansen, Bruce E., 1996. Residual-based Tests for Cointegration in Models with Regime Shifts, Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier 70(1), pp. 99-126.
10. Hatanaka M., 1996. Time-Series-Based Econometrics: Unit Roots and Cointegration, Oxford University Press.
11. Johansen, S., 1988. Statistical Analysis of Cointegration Vectors, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 12 (2–3), pp. 231–254.
12. Johansen, S., 1991. Estimation and Hypothesis Testing of Cointegration Vectors in Gaussian Vector Autoregressive Models, Econometrica 59(6), pp. 1551–1580.
13. Johansen, S., Jeslius, K., 1990. Maximum Likelihood Estimation and Inference on Cointegration–with Applications to the Demand for Money, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 52 (2), pp. 169–210.
14. Johansen, S., Juselius, K., 1992. Testing structural hypotheses in a multivariate cointegration analysis of the PPP and the UIP for UK, Journal of Econometrics 53, 211–244.
15. Kaldor, N., 1956. Alternative Theories of Distribution, Review of Economic Studies 23 (2), pp. 83-100.
16. Kunitomo. N. (1996) Tests OF Unit roots and Cointegration Hypotheses in Econometric Models, 47(1), pp. 79-109.
17. Lewis, W.A. (1955). The Theory of Economic Growth, Irwin, Homewood
18. Lutkepohl, H., 2004, Vector Autoregressive and Vector Error Correction Model, in Lutkepohl, H. and M. Kratzig (ed.), Applied Time Series econometrics, Cambridge University Press.
19. Masih, A. M. M., and R. Masih, 1996. Energy consumption, real income and temporal causality: results from a multi-country study based on cointegration and error-correction modeling techniques, Energy Economics 18, pp. 165–183Asafu-Adjaye, J., 2000. The relationship between energy consumption, energy prices and economic growth: time series evidence from Asian developing countries, Energy Economics 22, pp. 615–625.
20. Samuelson, P., and Modigiani, P., 1966. The Passinetti Paradox in Neo-classical and More General Models, Review of Economic Studies 33, pp. 269-301
21. Pahlavani, M., Wilson, E. J., and A. Valadkhani, 2006. Identifying major structural breaks in the Iranian macroeconomic variables, International Journal of applied Business and Economic Research 4(1), pp. 23-44.
22. Perron, p., 1989. The Great Crash, The Oil Price Shock and The Unit Root Hypothesis, Econometrica 57, pp. 1361-1401.
23. Phillips, P.C.B., P. Perron, 1988. Testing for a unit root. Biometrica 75, pp. 335-346.
24. Ranjan K., Sharma C., 2008. Government Expenditure and Economic Growth: Evidence from India. The ICFAI University Journal of Public Finance, 6(3): 60-69. [http://ssrn.com/abstract=1216242]
25. Zivot, E., Andrews, D., 1992. Further Evidence of the Great Crash, the Oil-price Shock and the Unit Root Hypothesis, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 10, pp.251-70.
Mehrara, M., Sharifi, S. B., & Karsalari, A. R. (2015). Public Funding of Investment in Transport and Communication and Economic Growth in Iran based on Gregory-Hansen Cointegration Analysis. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 5(12). 325-333.
Copyright: © 2015 The Author(s)
Published by Knowledge Words Publications (www.kwpublications.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode