Group items tagged

Iran’s economy is facing at least three large imbalances. The most acute is in the balance of payments.

Already some candidates are whispering that they favor lowering the exchange rate (increasing the value of the rial relative to other currencies) in order to fight inflation. These candidates would lead voters to believe that they can have their cake and eat it too

In these times of frozen international credit markets and economic sanctions against Iran, the second option of foreign borrowing is less likely than it was in the 1990s, but the risk of state-owned enterprises racking up foreign debts using short-term credit from eager overseas suppliers is not altogether gone. This is precisely what they did in the early 1990s, which deepened the post-oil boom slump and halted Rafsanjani’s reforms. Anticipating devaluation and government bailout, these enterprises incurred $10 billion in new short term debt alone between 1991 and 1993. Their actions forced the highly anticipated devaluation of the rial by a factor of 27 during the same period and forced the government to accept this debt as its own.

I think that both Mr. [Mehdi] Karroubi and Mr. [Mohammad] Khatami, when he was running, and the new entrant, Mr. [Mir-Hossein] Mussavi, have not been very specific about what is wrong with the economy and how they would fix it. When asked by an interviewer, Mr. Mussavi singled out the dismantling of the Management and Planning Organization as the major problem. But it is way down on the list of problems that I would consider serious.

given foreign assets that rose 20 percent year-on-year to $85 billion in January, according to central bank data cited by local media.

The gap between rural and urban incomes has been widening because the rural areas appear to have missed the recent boom or President Ahmadinejad’s redistribution.

Some of the gap is spurious because of the lower cost of living in rural areas (mainly housing), but the change is probably not.  

The rural-urban gap has been one of the main drivers of changes in inequality, especially in the last four years (more on this in a future post).     The gap narrowed under Mr. Moussavi’s watch, and widened during the Rafsanjani and Khatami’s administrations.  In the last three years of President Khatami’s government rural expenditures were rising faster than urban expenditures and the gap closed somewhat.  

He said, "I know the country's condition is better than all these gentlemen.  I know much of what they say about the condition of the country and economy is contrary to reality.  They are mistaken."

Mousavi also criticized the imbalanced competition ahead of the election, noting, "These elections are held under peculiar circumstances.  Thirty provincial and six national television channels cover the president's provincial visits, which are used for campaigning purposes. 

Last September, as the Ahmadinejad presidency entered its last year, Khamenei told Ahmadinejad and members of his cabinet, "Work as if you plan to work for another five years; imagine that this one year plus four more years are under your management.  Look at things, work, plan and act as if that is the case."

Speaking to an audience of elite young people at a conference organized by the Pro-Reza’i People Foundation, he said: “I have several slogans, one of which is ‘vitality, tranquility and stability for progress’.”

“If our statesmen act with humility and altruism, put sincerity first, and do not compete for power, morality will be strengthened in the country.”

But our major problem is that while we have had managers who have acted as models the political, defense, and security sectors, ... the managers of culture and the economy have not yet been able to train our heroic youth.”

please compare the _absolute_ numbers in a graphfor example, AZARBAYJAN:2004-reform/centrist: 950,0002004-conservative: 350,0002009-reform/centrist: 837,0002009-conservative: 1,131,000so reform/centrist decreased by 10% and conservative trippled!? even as people get younger, economy worse, and achmadenijad more unpopular?

city-level returns posted by the Iranian Interior Ministry on their website? These were posted by "Pejman" and translated by "Shaahin" in the comments thread to your previous post: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/statistical-evidence-does-not-prove.html#comment-672782692382259870

Just from a cursory glance, you can see the official poll results don't make any sense. Look at one of the third party candidates, Karoubi. He is from Lorestan. in 2005, in the first round he took 55% of the vote in Lorestan. In these results, he takes only 5%.Extraordinarily unlikely.