Journal of Iran's Economic Essays; an Islamic approach
Year:2009 | Volume:6 | Issue:11|Papers Count:9

Murabaha is defined as a particular kind of sale contract where the seller expressly discloses to the buyer the cost he has incurred on the commodities including purchase price, transport and storage costs, and sells it to him by adding some profit or mark-up thereon. Murabaha sale contract can be concluded in cash or on deferred payment basis. Normally, the profit margin in deferred payment basis is more.Recently Muslim scholars, in order to fill the vacuum of omitted loan certificates, have benefited from the features of Murabaha sale and embarked on designing bonds called Murabaha certificates which can be an appropriate supplement to Islamic asset and capital market for financing and as an instrument of the asset policy.Murabaha certificates can be designed in different forms some of the most important of which are: 1) Murabaha certificates for financing; 2) Murabaha certificates for meeting cash requirements; 3) Murabaha certificates for building assets of trade companies; 4) Collateral Murabaha certificates for turning into bonds the demands of banks and leasing institutes.In this article, Murabaha certificates are examined in terms of compliance with Shari’ah laws and economic standards. It has been demonstrated that the first and fourth type of Murabaha certificates are allowed only as per Shiite’s famous jurisprudence (fiqh) and can therefore be applied within the country (Iran). As for the third type, it complies with both Shiite as well as Sunni jurisprudence and can be applied in Iran and in the international level.The second type is faced with a serious jurisprudential problem and cannot therefore be publicized.

From late 1970s, with the change of dominant development paradigm, most countries followed Washington Consensus policy.According to it, with no roles for states, markets increase economic efficiency but practically countries which followed these policies encountered more economic, social and political problems due to lack of necessary institutional infrastructures.In this condition, revisionary thoughts called Post-Washington Consensus gradually appeared in economic development literature.This approach was developed as a result of Washington Consensus weaknesses and experiences of different developing countries especially Eastern Europe and East Asian countries. Consequently, the new economic and social development paradigm was founded according to which, state should have an important role in economic reforms. Therefore, economic transition from state oriented economy to market economy without considering the necessary prerequisites and institutional capacities will result in volatility and instability in economy.

This article studies empirically the causal relationship between the expenditures of social security and economic development in Iran’s economy during the years 1961 to 2003. Social security programs can affect economic development through different ways such as their impacts on saving motive, work and utilization of labor force.As for the relationship between social security and saving, theoretically there exist different views each relying on empirical evidences. Examining the relation between saving and social security is necessary in terms of the significance of savings in providing investment resources and economic development. However, in the final analysis, what is much more important is the nature of the relationship between the expenditures of social security and economic development. Theoretically, there exist three different views in this regard. Peter S. Barch (1969) holds that every single percent increase in the expenditures of social security causes 0.7 increase in economic growth rate. Some like Martin Feldstein (1985) reject this view and maintain that social security expenditures act in contrast with the economic growth rate of the countries. A third view, such as that put forward by Samuelson (1975) considers this effectiveness to be linked with capital balance as compared with the golden-rule level of saving and the type of governing social security system. The present study, while elaborating on this relationship and endeavoring to determine the causality direction, benefits from VAR model and Granger causality test. The article demonstrates in conclusion that there exists a relationship between causality from the expenditures of social security and economic growth but the opposite is not true, and increase in social security expenditures shall lead to a meaningful increase in national revenue.

The object of this research is to present a prediction model of price index in Tehran stock exchange using artificial neural networks. For this reason, the industry index, financial index and the annual TEDIX index were introduced as (independent) input variables. The MLP plan accompanied with post-processing algorithm and multi-factor model have been used to evaluate neural network model. The results suggest that the proposed neural networks model is potent of predicting price index in Tehran stock exchange. In the closing part, conclusion has been drawn and applicable suggestions and also directions have been given concerning pursuing and following up similar researches.

In recent years discussion about the role of government in economic has been the center of attention. One of the most important duties of the government for attaining economic growth is her distributive role.In this paper, it is attempted to pinpoint this role through fiscal policies and the important tools available to government for achieving this goal are the Transfer payment and Taxes which have been discussed, through using time series data, and the method used for this paper is the simultaneous equation system And the effect of fiscal policies (taxes and subsidies) on income distribution and economic growth is analyzed. From 1973-2003 The finding of this paper shows that fiscal policies of the country (increase of taxes and subsidies) has caused more equitable distribution of income and reduction of economic growth. The index of evaluation of better distribution of income is the Ginni coefficient. the data used for this paper have been collected from various publication of Central Bank of Iran. Increase in oil revenues and GDP have been a good reason for more equitable distribution of income and more growth of the economy.

Applying the real price of energy and redistribution of its subsidies have been one of the most critical and controversial issues in the Iranian economy in the last few years. Concerning this issue, the industrial institutes’ reaction to the energy’s real price and its related effects on industrial demands elasticity is especially important. In this study, using the Translog Cost Function and shepherd’s lemma, the function of the share of each of the production factors has been estimated from the total cost. From these estimations, elasticities of own and cross have been worked out.Murishima Elasticities of Substitution (MES) has also been estimated. Since the MES elasticities indicating the percentage of variation in the proportion of the factors due to the price variation is one of the critical factors, it is therefore by the aid of these elasticities that the procedure of implementing these factors has been considered. In part of this study, scenario building and a 75% increase in the energy price has been manipulated and its effects on the abovementioned elasticities have been examined. The relevant production factors in this study include: capital, labor force, and energy. The results of the study implies that the 75% increase in the energy price has significantly reduced the own – price elasticity of demand and the other elasticities.

Capital market efficiency is an important concept, in terms of economic growth and development. The efficiency of the emerging markets assumes greater importance as the trend of investments is accelerating in these markets as a result of regulatory reforms and removal of other barriers for the international equity investments.According to previous study results that show inefficiency of Tehran stock exchange, investigation of Weak-Form Efficiency Barriers of this capital market will help identify existing limitations, reform future courses of action and eventually promote market efficiency.Therefore, the present research endeavors to study the Weak-Form Efficiency Barriers of Tehran stock exchange and to offer strategies towards improving efficiency and removing barriers. The study method is descriptive-analytical and data gathering is on the basis of literature and case study. In this study, we identified the effective barriers of weak-form efficiency using Delphi method and factor analysis. Thus, the factors which prevent Tehran stock exchange, albeit within BSC four dimensions, from attaining its strategic goals were recognized as barriers of weak-form efficiency. For ranking of the barriers importance, we applied some MADM techniques such as AHP and TOPSIS. We found that, generally, the barriers on the four dimensions of BSC have a significant effect on capital market weakform efficiency. In addition, findings of this study suggest that internal process perspective factors are the main barriers in Tehran stock exchange weak-form efficiency. Also, finally, suggestions meant for improvement and promotions of stock exchange have been given.