Journal of Quantitative Economics
Year:2011 | Volume:8 | Issue:3 (30)|Papers Count:9

Income distribution inequality is the source of many other inequities which could result in economic differences regarding the wealth, income, consumption and eventually welfare in the society. Reaching income distribution equality requires an appropriate application of economic tools, one of which is known to be the fiscal policy. In the present study we used GWR method for the cross section data of the years 2001 and 2006 in order to capture the effect of government expenditure (both government final consumption expenditure and government investment) on inequity (measured by Gini coefficient) in Iran. Regarding the results an increase in government final consumption expenditure per capita on average leads to more inequity, while an increase in government investment per capita can result in more equitable income distribution. Moreover, as we move from the east to the west through the country, the effect of government final consumption expenditure on income inequality increases, whilst the effect of government investment increases in the opposite direction. Spatial disparity is also significant for government final consumption expenditure in 1380 and for government investment in 2006.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is one of the best methods for financing the investment projects. In addition this type of investment is used for other goals, like: technology promotion, development skills and management for enhancing the quality of domestic labor, export market development, increasing domestic production standards, increasing economic growth and improving the welfare of the people and also for moving toward a market economy. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate relationship between uncertainty of real exchange rate and foreign direct investment (FDI) in Iran during the period 1979-2008. To this end, first the index of uncertainty of exchange rate due to real exchange rate fluctuations was estimated using the generalized auto regressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model and considered as an proxy variable for uncertainty of real exchange rate. Then the relationship between uncertainty of real exchange rate and FDI was estimated using the auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) with Schwartz-Bayesian criterion. The results showed that fluctuations of exchange rates have no effect on FDI. FDI has an inverse relation with inflation, lagged exchange rate and lagged capital stocks and has a direct relation with the index of good governance and human resources. The long run relation for FDI has been confirmed by the results.

Forecasting in financial markets has always been of intereste for researchers and investors. In particular, forecasting the market indexes is of major importance. Index forecasting methods in financial markets have been developed along with the development of time series models. In this paper a specific model for forecasting Tehran exchange price index was proposed based on mixture of experts. The results confirmed the high performance of the proposed model in modeling and forecasting Tehran exchange price index time series.

Raisin is one of the most important Iran, s export goods. Iran ranks third in terms of raisin production after the United States and Turkey, and second in terms of export. Thus studying the effective factors on raisin export is of most importance. To estimate the model, ARDL approach and time series of 1972-2005 was used.Results showed that relative price, real effective exchange rate and production quantity have positive effect, and rival exporters and the Revolution and War (dummy variables) have negative effect on raisin in Iran. Thus we offer that exporters as well as government should pay more attention to Raisin processing, packing and shipping. The government and Central Bank should manage exchange rate system in a way to make raisin export advantageous for exporters.

In this study we examined the relationship between Tehran stock exchange price index and some macroeconomic variables such as CPI, exchange rate, house price index, gold price index and value added of industry during 1991-2006 using VAR and VECM approach. According to the results, stock exchange price index is affected by its own lages, exchange rate and value added of industry, in short run, while it is influenced by gold price index, house price index, CPI, exchange rate, value added of industry and export, in long run.

The main goal of this research is to investigate the causal relationship between financial development and export growth in Fars province. To this end four different indices including private deposit ratio, banking credit to private sector, credit balance ratio and M2 to GDP ratio were to estimate financial development. The results of the estimation showed that there is unidirectional causality form export growth to financial development. As a result, the findings support the demand following hypothesis for Fars and reject the supply leading theory advocated by Patrick (1966). This indicates that the expansion of exports leads to financial development. This might be due to the demand of exporting firms for financing their imports of raw materials, primary and capital goods, new technology and also for receiving financial supports against foreign uncertainties and domestic shocks.

Interest rate channel is one of the important transmission paths that affect the real sector of the economy. Review of optimal monetary policy literature shows the existence of relationship between inflation, output gap and interest rate. In addition to disagreements of causality of interest rate and inflation, there are different views on how interest rate affects economic variables.The main objective of this study is to simulate simultaneous control of inflation and output gap in a minimum interest rate, consist with Islamic economics, using control theory and dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. Dynare software was used to do the simulation, and Matlab was applied to write the control algorithm code as well as to estimate the controller equation. The result of the study showed that prerequisite for controlling interest rate toward its minimum level is to reduce inflation rate to reach the level of 3 percent during 6 years period.