Examining the effect of investment in housing on employment in Lorestan Province

Changaei, Yasaman; Shokri, Mostafa; Alizadeh, Mohammad

doi:10.22034/uep.2026.592159.1958

Examining the effect of investment in housing on employment in Lorestan Province

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Yasaman Changaei ¹

Mostafa Shokri ²

Mohammad Alizadeh ³

¹ PhD student in Economics, Faculty of Management and Economics, Lorestan University, Khorramabad, Iran

² Assistant Professor of Economics, Faculty of Management and Economics, Lorestan University, Khorramabad, Iran

³ Associate Professor of Economics, Faculty of Management and Economics, Lorestan University, Khorramabad, Iran

10.22034/uep.2026.592159.1958

Abstract

Despite its significant economic capacity, Lorestan Province has always faced an unemployment rate higher than the national average and is considered one of the country’s immigrant-sending provinces. Given the labor-oriented nature of the housing sector and its potential to create employment, this study examines the effect of investment in the housing sector on employment in Lorestan Province from 2000 to 2024 using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The results show that, contrary to short-term theoretical expectations, investment in the housing sector has had a negative and significant effect on employment in Lorestan Province, considering the index of the number of building permits issued. This result may be related to specific housing market conditions and the province’s economic structure; factors that have prevented the housing sector’s potential employment-generation capacity from being fully converted into actual employment. Therefore, given the province’s conditions, realizing these capacities requires identifying and removing structural and executive obstacles to investment in this sector; otherwise, any policymaking in the field of housing will be ineffective, and the gap between the current and desired situation will remain.

Keywords

Employment

housing investment

Lorestan

ARDL

Subjects

Regional Economics

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