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This study examines the deviation of concentration from its steady state level in Iranian manufacturing industries. The study is carried out for 94 industries based on cross- section method with four-digit ISIC code in the years 1999 and 2007. The coefficient of partial adjustment is significant and less than one. Therefore there is significant partial adjustment towards steady state level of concentration. The same results were obtained in subsamples including 47 industries with high advertising intensity and 47 industries with low advertising intensity. The comparison of Herfindahl Hirschman index indicates that the level of industrial concentration in the majority of industries (63 percent) has decreased during this period. The findings of the study support the Sutton the market size in exogenous sunk cost industries. But the result is not valid for endogenous sunk cost industries.

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Despite the fact that productivity has long been studied in economic literature, only in recent years it has been considered as the important issue in the Iranian economy and the Fourth Development Plan could be considered as a turning point on looking at it. Based on the Plan, one third of economic growth should come from the productivity improvement so it is expected to see the results of productivity growth on the performance of economy and the firms. This study aims to examine the impacts of total factor productivity and labor productivity on the survival of new firms in Iranian manufacturing industries. Data of this study comes from the censuses taken by the Statistical Center of Iran in 2000, 2001 and 2002. The firms were divided into two categories of survived and exited firms. Using the Cox hazard model, the impact of productivity on their survival probability has been examined. Contrary to expectation, the results of this paper indicate that total factor productivity does not show a significant positive impact on survival probability of these firms. However, increase in labor productivity significantly increases the survival of new firms. This finding means that labor productivity, which can be considered as a manifestation of human capital in each firm, is very important for the survival of firm, especially in the first year of entry.

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An increase in firm’s export enhances its productivity via several channels such as competition, technology transfer and economies of scale exploitation. The main purpose of this paper is to examine learning by export hypothesis, in which a firm’s export affects its productivity positively. The effect of Iranian manufacturing industries’ export on their total factor productivity has been tested employing new international trade theories, using Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and the latest micro data during 2001-2010. The results show a positive and significant effect of export on total factor productivity of Iranian manufacturing industries. Based on this result, it seems that industrial firm’s export increases their productivity.

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Various economic studies have shown that Minimum Efficient Scale (MES) varies in different industries and therefore economic firms enter in industries with different sizes. Nevertheless, firms attempt to reach the MES of the industry in a reasonable time to survive in an industry. From different point of view, the reasonable time can be evaluated with speed of adjustment. In fact, there is a significant relationship between the time and the speed of adjustment. Accordingly, this paper attempts to determine the speed of firm size adjustment in Iranian manufacturing industries at 4-digit ISIC code industry levels. Investigating the effect of various factors on the speed of adjustment is another goal of this paper. In this study, Comanor-Wilson method based on employment criteria is used for the estimation of MES. Using cross-sectional regression technique over three years, the coefficients of industry structure, technology levels and distance to MES at the time of entry is estimated on geometric mean of . The results of this study show that in contrast to the expectation, firms that are far away from MES, adjust themselves with slower speed. From policy point of view, the finding points to inability of Iranian manufacturing industries’ firms in achieving an appropriate speed of adjustment at the time of entry. Therefore, supportive policies are necessary for survival of new entrance firms during infancy.

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The aim of this study is calculating and comparing the productivity of labor and capital in manufacturing industries of Iranian provinces during 2003-2013. In this context, the rate of fixed assets depreciation is calculated with using Statistical Center and Central Bank data, and then the capital stock is estimated by the perpetual inventory method. The production function of provinces is estimated with applying linear Cobb-Douglas production function and using econometric panel data method. Then, generalized productivities of labor and capital in manufacturing industries are calculated and compared in the provinces. The results of this study indicate that although in the early years, regional disparities in productivity of labor and capital are not significant, but over time, their variation range has increased, and provinces moved to more heterogeneity. However, the low level of productivity of labor and capital is a common feature of all provinces. Therefore, the policy recommendation of this study is planning for increasing the productivity of labor and capital of manufacturing industries in the provinces and distributing the resources according to possibilities and limitations of each province to decreasing the disparities and achieving to regional balances. This becomes more important, especially with beginning the sixth development plan.

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The importance of Research and Development (R&D) in economic growth and development has considered and theoretically and empirically confirmed by researchers. It can be said that the necessity of entering the global markets and developing the modern industrial sectors in any country is to focus on basic and applied research. This paper aims to investigate the impact of “the share of research budget in GDP” on economic growth in Iran during the 1969-2012 period. For this purpose, we estimate Iran’s economic growth model with emphasis on the role of the research budget share (% of GDP) by using the introduced model in Tunali (2016) and specifying a Markov Switching model. The estimation results indicate that the research budget share (% of GDP) has a significant and positive effect on economic growth in Iran. Moreover, the results show economic growth in Iran has two regimes, including a regime with high mean and variance (high-growth regime) and another regime with low mean and variance (low-growth regime). According to the results, the probability of staying in the low-growth regime is higher than staying in the high-growth regime. Finally, this paper suggests that to improve the economic growths, increasing in Iran’s budget in research is essential. In addition, funding applied research, which targeted to strengthen the national production, especially high-tech and knowledge-based products are useful for promoting the growth trend.
 

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The main purpose of this paper is that examine the effect of business environment on the performance of manufacturing industries in Iran . For doing so, we use simultaneous panel data techniques for Iranian industries with ten employees or more based on the two-digit ISIC Codes during 2003-2011 . The results show that the business environment indicators has not a significant effect on the profitability of manufacturing industries in Iran.