Impact of an economic development plan on regional disparities in Iran

This research develops a new multidimensional regional development and quality-of-life index for the provinces of Iran and uses it to examine the evolution of regional disparities during the 4th and 5th Five Year Plans. The new multidimensional development indicator involves the use of the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and Shannon entropy to rank provinces and explore their trajectories. Although balanced and fair regional development is one primary objective of Iranian five-year plans, the results show that while all provinces have made progress, the two development plans have done little to diminish provincial development gaps, creating the need for a new targeted growth-pole strategy.