Amiri, Arshia & Gerdtham, Ulf-G, 2011.
"Relationship between exports, imports, and economic growth in France: evidence from cointegration analysis and Granger causality with using geostatistical models,"
MPRA Paper
34190, University Library of Munich, Germany. (local copy)
Now published as:
Arshia Amiri & Ulf-G Gerdtham, 2012.
"Granger Causality Between Exports, Imports and GDP in France: Evidance from Using Geostatistical Models,"
The Economic Research Guardian,
Weissberg SRL, vol. 2(1), pages 43-59, May. (local copy)
Ribeiro Ramos, Francisco F., 2001. "Exports, imports, and economic growth in Portugal: evidence from causality and cointegration analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 613-623, December. (local copy)
Amiri and Gerdtham plagiarize Ribeiro Ramos. The first half of the long first paragraph of the introduction is taken from section 2.1. The second paragrpah is taken from section 2.2. The fourth paragraph is taken from section 2.3.
I am sending this email to you regarding to correcting the manuscript ''Amiri, Arshia & Gerdtham, Ulf-G, (2011) Relationship between exports, imports, and economic growth in France: evidence from cointegration analysis and Granger causality with using geostatistical models. MPRA Paper No. 34190, unpublished paper''. Please find attachment which we just change the manner of referencing to the truth way without plagiarism at all. I (Arshia Amiri) am sorry about all problems happening in my unpublished working papers all my co-authors have no knowledge about the fault of plagiarism in my unpublished papers.Later correspondence from Arshia Amiri
I have the responsibility of all plagiarism which is in my unpublished working paper. All my co-authors do not know nothing about this happening at all. All of them are professional researchers in economics and guide me to do my articles. I again have the responsibility and this mistake happened from JUST me (A Amiri).From Ulf-G. GerdthamIn doing this at first I have not any academic knowledge about this mistake and thanks from you to teach it to me and I promise to attention to it. Maybe because these papers are unpublished I just looked for finding a useful journal to submit the corrected versions. Actually, the unpublished working paper have no academic advantage at all and I were not careful about the references.
I found out about a week ago that a colleague (Professor Bruno Ventelou) allerted me that one of his papers as he have together with Arshia Amiri had been accused for plagiatarism in a similar email from you as that I have just received. Professor Ventelou kindly warned me because this could also happen to me since I also collaborate with Amiri. This is now unfortunately what appears to have happened, i.e. a week or so later.Later from Ulf-G. GerdthamBelow is the letter that Professor Ventelou sent to you as a background so I don't have to repeat every detail in it. I have had a similar role in co-authorship as Professor Ventelou, i.e. a supervisory role and have never met Amiri personally. Professor Ventelou wrote in his letter to you that he have informed Arshia about the deontological rules and asked him to suppress all plagiarism. Professor Ventelou also assumed that "All published works after 2010 must be clean." I can only regret that this does not seem to be fully to be the case.
In Amiri's reply to you he takes all responsibility which is good for me, though I recognize with sadness that I am not anyway free from responsibility and can only say that I must be very much more careful in the future. I will also bring up this issue with Amiri and emphasize that this behavior is not acceptable.
Bruno and I (Gerdtham) have had additional contacts with Arshia Amiri where we both have empasized the seriousness of the issue of plagiatarism and think that the message got through.
Letter from David Edgerton, Department Head, Department of Economics, Lund University
Thank you for informing me about the plagiarism of a working paper where Professor Ulf-G Gerdtham at our Economics Department has been involved, i.e. Arshia Amiri & Ulf-G Gerdtham, 2012. "Granger Causality Between Exports, Imports and GDP in France: Evidance from Using Geostatistical Models," The Economic Research Guardian, Weissberg SRL, vol. 2(1), pages 43-59, May. This is regrettable and, therefore, I recently had a meeting with Ulf where we went through his collaboration with A. Amiri, in some detail. From our discussion, it was obvious that Ulf was unaware of the plagiarism of the paper, even though he can never be completely free from responsibility since he is a co-author of the paper and thus must be responsible for all the text. However, I am convinced that Ulf acted in good faith and that he (Ulf), mistakenly, trusted his co-author (Amiri).According to the plagiarism committee, at least another person (Bruno Ventelou) has suffered from co-authorship with A. Amiri. Ulf has also recently discovered that his name has been used by A. Amiri as a co-author of another publication "Neural-fuzzy for econometrics estimation: a handbook of mathwork for economists" of which Ulf was completely unaware, and in a subject that is not even his research area. After communication with a third supposed co-author of the same publication - Mansoura Zibaei, who Ulf did not previously know - Ulf found out that this person was also unaware of his supposed co-authorship. Ulf, and other people, have thus suffered from their collaboration with A. Amiri and have been deceived by this person in several publications. A. Amiri's reaction when confronted with these facts has been that he is
or that he . Numerous emails confirm this. Based on this, I conclude that A. Amiri is guilty of serious inappropriate behaviour when writing papers an in his research collaboration in general. This has led us to the following conclusions:
1) Ulf-G Gerdtham will no longer assist in the supervision of Arshia Amiri, which he has done in an informal manner during the last two years.
2) His WPs with A. Amiri (not published in the Lund University WP serie) should be removed from the archives.
3) We are currently considering extending our use of plagiarism software in our research collaborations. The Economics Department at Lund University uses such software at the moment when checking bachelor, masters and Phd theses, but it may be a good idea to use them more widely in different research collaborations among authors, in particular since this becomes more common.
I would be happy to receive any comments on the above.