New survey data show precipitous drop in incomes
For the last few days I have been staring with disbelief at the results of the most recent Household expenditures and Income Survey from the Statistical Center of Iran. The drops in expenditures and incomes are much larger than I had expected. Too bad that the release of the Central Bank national accounts data have been delayed. They wold settle my questions about the recession last year because besides personal consumption, they would provide data on investment and public expenditures.
Rural incomes and expenditures rose by 2.8% and 10%, and urban by 13% and 15%. Taking into account an inflation rate of 25.4%, we aer talking about 20 and 10 declines in average incomes of rural and urban households, respectively. This level of decline did not happen in the worst years of the war with Iraq. The government was not short of cash, so why such a large drop?
I will have to get back to staring at the numbers until someone enlightens me!
Conference on the Iranian Economy
This weekend I attended a very interesting conference entitled Iranian Economy at a Crossroads: Domestic and Global Challenges. The conference was organized by Jeff Nugent, Hashem Pesaran, and Hadi Salehi Esfahani. In attendance were Iranian and non-Iranian economists, economists and non-economist, young and old economists, and economists living inside and outside Iran. This is the second in a series of conferences on the Iranian economy that I have attended. The first was at the University of Illinois and was organized by Hadi Esfahani. That one was more focused on economics than this one, in which one interesting paper was presented by the famed Iran anthropologist, Bill Beeman. There was mention of the next one being a year from now at the University of Chicago. I notice a rising level of interest in economic research on Iran, a sign that more data is becoming available, more people are writing on Iran (mostly young economists), and more people are interested in learning about Iran’s economy, the latter perhaps caused by the rising threat of new sanctions against Iran. Let us hope that the flow of data and conferences will continue in the future but the sanctions won’t. (more…)
Signs of the economy slowing–anyone in charge?
The recently published unemployment data for spring 2009 (1388) indicate that economic slowdown continued in the second quarter of 2009. Without the national accounts data for 1387, due any day, it is difficult to be certain about the severity of the current economic slump, but unemployment and inflation data and the continuing political crisis in Tehran are reasons to be concerned about the economy. (more…)
The three rates of inflation
A friend asked me to write something to help reduce the confusion surrounding how inflation is measured and reported–or misreported during the election. Here is a brief explanation of not how the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is measured, which is a long story, but the three ways it can be reported. (more…)
Chatham House rules for election fraud
Someone has put up a $10,000 reward for anyone who can prove that the Iranian election was “stolen”, but I don’t think that Chatham House (CH) is likely to win. A Chatham House report prepared by political scientist Ali Ansari claims to have statistical evidence that the election was rigged. I had not planned to write on non-economic issues here but this one qualifies because it deals with numbers. (more…)
On the election aftermath
Here is the second installment of my commentary on the election crisis that appeared in NYT’s “room for debate” today.
On the election
This site is about issues related to Iran’s economy, so I prefer to stay away from purely political topics, such as the controversial election outcome and its more recent tragic consequences. However, since one reader asked for my take on the election, I refer here to a short piece that I wrote last week for the New York Times blog, “room for debate.”
I received some critical email responses to this article, which were mostly motivated by the title that NYT had picked for the piece (not entirely misleading). A longer companion article is to appear shortly in the same place.
Roger Cohen on Iran’s presidential election
I thought his latest piece which appeared yesterday in the NYT was very perceptive and moving– Iran Awakens Yet Again. As its title suggests, he considers the movement in 2009 to be similar to the one that swept Khatami into power in 1997. I think there are important differences between Iran in 1997 and 2009. In a commentarywhich appeared on the Brookings site yesterdayI discuss this briefly: http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2009/0610_iran_election_salehi_isfahani.aspx.
Is the election pitting the poor vs. the middle class?
Every day this seems more like the real story of the 2009 election. Class lines are more clearly drawn in this election than in the past. The common political narrative of reformers vs. conservatives is good description but not good political analysis. Political leanings have social and economic roots that makes them sensitive to the internal dynamics of the society. There are two fault lines that run deep in the Iranian society–the rural vs. urban and the poor vs. the middle class–both of which seem to be reflected in the political divisions that have come to the fore in this election. Crude personal observations (backed by TV images!) suggest that the supporters of the two leading candidates are socially diverse: the poor (and the rural?) are more likely to vote for Mr. Ahmadinejad and the middles class in either location is for Mr. Moussavi. (more…)
The Ahmadinejad-Karrubi debate: and the loser is …
Statistics. Between the two of them it was hard to tell who won that debate on June 6, 2009. But statistics was a certain loser. Mr. Ahmadinejad provided a series of charts to defend his economic record (which, by the way, was not under attack that night) but Mr. Karrubi dismissed them by simply saying that his numbers were wrong. Most of the numbers I was able to see on the television screen seemed right to me. But, unfortunately, numbers were not the point of the debate. (more…)
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