Structural Changes and the Index of Economic Well-being: Empirical Evidence from the Iranian Economy

Abstract

It is a well-established empirical fact that economic growth and development brings about major changes in sectorial output, employment, and consumption structure. In the context of economic development discussion, structural change refers to the change in key components of macroeconomic indicators, including national production and expenditure, exports and imports, population, and the sectorial composition of labor. Considering the importance of human capital for economic growth and development, the most important of the above factors is the labor market and the sectorial composition of employment. Another important dimension of economic development is economic well-being. In this study, we formulated and calculated two indicators called the Coefficient of Structural Change of Iran (CSCI) and the Index of Economic Well-Being of Iran (IEWBI), and then used the vector autoregressive (VAR) modeling method and the software EViews v.10 to analyze the impact of structural changes of Iranian economy on IEWBI. The results indicate the positive effect of structural changes and therefore development policies on the economic well-being of Iran when the weighting scheme of IEWBI was biased in favor of the consumption flow dimension, and the negative effect in other cases. JEL: C39, I31, O11.