The haggling between Iran and the so-called P5+1—the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany—is scheduled to come to a close on Monday, November 24th. The two parties each want different things. One thing that Iran would like is the removal of the economic sanctions imposed on it by the United States and its allies.
After decades of wrongheaded economic policies, Iran’s economy is in terrible shape. The authoritative Economic Freedom of the World: 2014 Annual Report puts Iran near the bottom of the barrel: 147th out of the 152 countries ranked. And the “World Misery Index Scores” rank Iran as the fourth most miserable economy in the world. In addition to economic mismanagement, economic sanctions and now-plunging oil prices are dragging Iran’s structurally distorted economy down. So, it’s no surprise that Iran would like one of the weights (read: sanctions) on its economy lifted.
Just how important would the removal of sanctions be? To answer that question, we use the Institute of International Finance’s detailed macroeconomic framework. The results of our analysis are shown in the table and charts below the jump.