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Agricultural sector is one of the most significant sectors in Iran. This sector accounts for a significant share of GDP, employment and non-oil exports in the economy. Moreover, it produces food and also raw materials used to produce manufacturing products. Therefore, the effects of macro policies on agriculture need to be well understood. This study aims to investigate the effects of exports and tax policy on agricultural employment in Iran during the period 1979 – 2005. Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach is used to estimate the empirical model. The findings of this study show that direct tax has significant and negative effect on agricultural employment while exports have significant and positive effect.

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Using Ramsey – Cass – Koopmans optimal growth model and specifying government’ tax behavior, this study analyzes the effect of tax policies on steady-state and optimal dynamic path of consumption, capital stock and  output for Iran and a group of East Asian countries. In this regard, after specifying consumption and capital stock dynamic behaviors, a model is calibrated and simulated for the selected economies by using annul data during 1980 -2010. Based on the simulation results for Iran, and compared to East Asian region, reductions in tax rates have no significant effects on steady- state and optimal dynamic path of capital stock, consumption and per capita output. Hence, tax policies are not effective in stimulating the real sector of the Iranian economy. The results also show that reductions in rates of income tax, capital gain tax and profit tax have positive and significant effects on the long-run steady-state path of consumption, capital stock and output, especially in less developed East Asian countries. The simulation results show that reduction in consumption tax rate, in particular across the highly developed East Asian countries, has positive and significant effect on steady-state of consumption; however, it has no effect on capital stock and output.