Why Investors Have Always Struggled in #Iran - Bloomberg

Why Investors Have Always Struggled in Iran - Bloomberg:

Given how Iran’s economy has fared in the 40 years since the Islamic Revolution, it’s reasonable for Iranians to wonder whether they might be more prosperous had the revolution never taken place. Iran’s average annual growth in gross domestic product for the years 1961-78 was 8.86 percent, or more than three times higher than the 2.44-percent average for 1980-2017.

Fantasy-bursting economists might point out that the pre-revolution figures are inflated by the “catch-up effect,” when a poor country achieves quick growth from a low base by building new roads, electrifying towns, adopting new technologies, liberalizing markets and so on. All the same, Jahangir Amuzegar, a former executive director of the International Monetary Fund (and briefly Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s finance minister in 1962), argued that Iran’s economic performance, “if not exactly the ‘economic miracle’ that the Shah’s supporters liked to call it, was undoubtedly one of the world’s clearest success stories.”

Iran’s governments since 1979 have successfully diversified Iran’s industrial sector, expanded its tax base, and reduced inequality, but they have also earned a reputation for ineptitude and corruption.