Journal of Iran's Economic Essays; an Islamic approach
Year:2016 | Volume:12 | Issue:24|Papers Count:8

Capital markets are recognized as bridges between investor and investee. The mechanisms applied in these markets accelerate the economic development by the growing volume of savings and investment. In this market, financing a major part of the costs of firms should be possible by the existing instruments. Preferred shares or preferred stocks is a type of stock which may have any combination of features not possessed by common stock including properties of both an equity and a debt instrument, and is generally considered a hybrid instrument. Preferred stock is considered to be a hybrid security, having some of the characteristics of common stock but also resembling fixed income offerings in many respects. Unlike common stocks, preferred stocks tend to stay relatively stable in price after their issuance. They behave more like bonds than stocks in a number of ways, as they pay regular dividends at either a set or variable rate of interest, and their prices fluctuate in the secondary market in accordance with interest rates. Similar to an equity security, a preferred share represents an ownership interest. Preferred stocks are favored by those investors who seek fixed regular income and a reasonable safety of their capital. Using an analytical – descriptive and library method, this paper explores the concept of preferred share and its efficiency and presents an economic-jurisprudence based analysis of these types of stocks. The hypothesis followed by this paper is that preferred shares are stocks with outstanding interests which can be issued in the framework of Sharia rules with regard to the characteristics appropriate the economic and cultural situation in Iran. The findings show that due to the principle of contagion of ‎stipulation decay (corruption) to contract which has been adopted by the former, later and contemporary Fuqahā' or Islamic jurists, in fact, accumulated dividends cannot change the nature of contract. Then, under every characteristic and condition, preferred stocks are similar to common stocks in nature.

America's economy is now highly dependent on military production. The American military-industrial complex to achieve constant production, as any other industry, requires a market with sustainable consumption. Sustainable consumption of armaments means permanent war. Moreover, Huntington's Clash of Civilizations believes Islamic Civilization is the major threat to the Western Civilization. Considering these two points, American economic and political activities are concentrated on the establishment and maintaining a virtual enemy and creating an everlasting war in the Muslim world. To illuminate the formation of the ISIS in the Middle East during the last decade five main theories have been proposed. The theory favored by this paper explained that USA by establishment of terrorist groups such as ISIS creates a market for industrial products of military industrial complex in one hand and also resolves Huntington fears of Islamic civilization with such groups educated within Islamic civilization on the other hand. Statistical evidences concerning the growth of terrorist activities after the collapse of the former Soviet Union approve the present theory.

Optimal monetary policy has been identified as a policy that has the lowest social losses. The loss functions of the monetary authority including the key components for achieving the least social Loss. The function which has been recognized as the appropriate framework for drawing optimal monetary policy is designed based on macroeconomic objectives and the existing constraints and facts of every system and cannot be independent of the fundamental value based principles governing an economic system.In this paper, the objectives of the loss function according to the goals of Islamic banking and compatible with the Iran's economy are explored using augmented Philips curve and the monetary policy based on the stock of money and ARDL model is estimated in the time series of 1977 to 2013. The results of optimal monetary position of loss functions show that, in an optimization process, economic growth must be based on the outcome of targeted growth and the reduction of income gaps should occur simultaneously. Also, in the current structure of the economy, monetary authorities cannot alone guarantee achieving the goals of economic growth based on income gap along with the reduction of unemployment gap. Then, the move toward strengthening financial markets and its relationship with the monetary policy seems necessary.

This paper studies the neoclassical profit theory and Islamic perspective on profit and investigates the necessary components required for establishment of an Islamic theory. In this paper, first, we discuss the neoclassical standpoint on the concept, origin, and the issues of ownership of profit. The emphasis is on the distinction between risk and uncertainty. In a dynamic world, when uncertainty is absent from neoclassical models, therefore, no profit exists. We explain that the neoclassical economists are divided on this issue that whether the third factor of production (capital) or the forth factor (such as entrepreneur) should own the profit. Moreover, the general equilibrium approach adopted by neoclassical economics eliminates the profit from the capitalistic system. It is shown that neoclassical economics lacks a coherent and consistent theory of profit. We also explain Islamic perspective in the fields of concept, origin and allocation of profit. We make clear that in Islamic economics there is no need to allocate profit to only one factor of production such as capital or entrepreneur. All factors of production including labor can earn profit in a profit-loss sharing system advocated by Islamic economics. Moreover, the fact that profit is a result of uncertainty is not in contrast with Islamic principles. Finally, we address the limitations and challenges that one should take into consideration when developing an Islamic theory of profit.

As governments and private sectors fail to supply public goods in social optimal level, third sector of economy and Waqf institutions become more important in Iran. In this study household's willingness to pay for establishment of Waqf institutions, that finances educational organizations, was investigated in a case study of Isfahan city. Based on contingent valuation method a double one dimensional questionnaire was determined and the Logit Model was estimated using MLE approach. The results show that 44.78% of households have tendency to pay for Waqf institution, where in average willingness to pay is 622570 Rials per month. Also results show that willingness to pay significantly affected by proposed price, household's income, education, job and age.

One of the challenges in studies about religion is the lack of valid measures for determining religious characteristics. Although some attempt has been made for this purpose, but, considering religion as a capital is less seen in the existing measures. In this article it is attempted to design a measure for evaluating religious social capital based on scientific principles and global means. To estimate the accuracy of its analysis, it was used for measuring the religious social capital of the PhD students of Tarbiat Modarres University in four faculties including Humanities, Economics and Management, Engineering and Medical Sciences. In this research first the measure was designed and then a questionnaire provided by the Position Generator method[1] was distributed among the PhD student. Data analysis was performed through regression techniques and analytical methods. Findings of this research show that the availability of religious social capital sources is greater for male married students of humanities including economics and managements.

This study by utilizing the data of micro-level statistics on households’ income and expenditure survey over 2005-2014 investigates the determinant of urban-rural welfare inequality in Iran’s household. One of the factors affecting the welfare gap (consumption) is income gap. For this study, we uses of Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition approach (inequality at mean consumption) and Machado-Mata decomposition (inequality of consumption at entire distribution). The result of Blinder-Oaxaca and Machado-Mata indicates that welfare gap has more decreased in 2014 than 2005 and also efficient gap has decreased because the human capital in rural area has increased. But, the comparison of Islamic economics and conventional economics shows that in Islamic economics, the discrimination is in favor of rural labor while in conventional economics the discrimination is in favor of urban labor. The efficient gap in Islamic economics is less than or equal to conventional economics. The main causes of efficient inequality are differences in the education of household heads and their income and family size of urban and rural households.