political influence index and its impact on the development of iranian provinces

The political influence coefficient is one of the critical factors in the development and imbalance of regional development, indicating the role of economic rent, power elites, and political lobbyists in decision-making centers. these people provide the conditions for the development of their hometown and province by lobbying to increase the budget and other influential factors on the macroeconomic indexs of these areas. despite the importance of balanced regional development, this concept has received less attention in development literature. thus, the political influence coefficient is introduced with 14 sub-indexs, and its influence on the regional development index is examined for 31 provinces of iran in the third to twelfth governments during 1981-2017. multiple-attribute decision-making, topsis, and quantile regression for panel data and eviews were the models and software used. three development indicators political, educational and financial influence coefficient were examined to investigate the impact on regional development. all three indicators had a positive and significant impact on regional development in iran. the political influence coefficient index as the main variable had the most impact, which was 2.35 and 3.11 times more than the control variables education indicators and financial index and had a role in the economic development of iranian provinces. due to the purposeful selection of the quantile panel regression model, different results were obtained for the impact of independent variables on the development of provinces in different deciles.