Journal of Economic Research
Year:2012 | Volume:46 | Issue:97|Papers Count:10

This study examines technical efficiency in Iran's banking system using unbalanced panel data for 17 state and private banks during the 1997-2009 period. Therefore, technical efficiency of banks was measured through estimating a Translog Cost Function in the form of a Panel SFA Error Compound Model. Then, he effect of underlying factors including both individual and structural (ownership/activity) variables on banks' technical inefficiency, was measured in a Multilevel / Mixed Effects Model.The results showed that in spite of the improvement in state banks' efficiency within time, it showed a decreasing trend compared with that of private banks. Furthermore, the results of Multilevel/Mixed effects model showed that 57 percent of the difference among banks were explained with respect to owenership and 15 percent were explained by activity and obligatory loans, respectively. Finally, it was shown that automation is the most importance factor in improving banks' efficiency.

This paper explores the importance of oil sector in providing input for economic sectors and also its changes during the last decades in Iran. To that end, the partial and total forward linkage between oil sector and other domestic production sectors as well as their changes are examined using the input-output tables of the years 1986 and 2001. And also based on the information on hand, performance of oil sector through the years 1965, 1969, 1973, and 1974 have been studied as well. Results of the research however, indicate a poor linkage between oil sector as an input provider and other economic sectors. Though this linkage has grown slowly from 1986 to 2001, due to its initial weaknesses as well as a faster growth in other sectors. The rank of oil sector among all other production sector in providing input has also dropped in 2001 compared to 1986.

This study investigates the relationship between market structure and profitability in the Iranian manufacturing industries. In this study, raw data based on international standard industrial classification (at four digit code (has been used. Fixed effects panel estimation method (based on diagnostic test results) has been chosen for empirical investigation. The result of the study confirms the validity of structural approach. The results indicate that most of structural variables have significant effect on the average rate of profitability in the selected industries. The results also show the fact that export sale ratio has no significant effect on the average rate of profitability of firms in the selected industries.

In Iran’s system of tripartite collective bargaining, does the wage-policy maker consistently react optimally to the best move made by the exchange rate-policy maker (Nash-rule) or only to the state of economy (non-Nash rule)?. This paper not only investigates the nature of the political game (Nash rule against non-Nash rule) but also estimates some structural parameters by using 2SLS method and considers various economic scenarios for different bargaining conditions. The results indicate that the Nash-rule equilibrium is unstable and thus the non-Nash rule becomes more meaningful. Under the non-Nash rule, the simulated wage growth exhibits a counter-cyclical pattern and increases with the union of workers’ bargaining power. The government’s role appears to strike a balance between the interests of the employers’and the employees. Consistent with actual observations, the simulated exchange-rate appreciation has acted as a complement to wage growth from 1360 to 1385.

According to the importance of careful review of crude oil market fluctuations on the Iranian economy, in this paper a multivariate model of Markov switching vector error correction model (have been used). Variables such as real gross domestic product in industrial sector, real effective exchange rate, real governmental expenditure, real import, inflation rate and real crude oil price is used to detect the asymmetric effects of crude oil market shocks in the expansion and recession phase of the Iran industrial sector by using the seasonal data from years 1368 to 1386. Results show asymmetric behavior of the model variables on the oil price fluctuations in different regimes of the Iran industrial sector, so that with moving from the recession phase to expansion phase of the Iran industrial sector, the negative effect of increase in oil price on the Iranian economy has been increased.

Iranian female participation rate in the labor market of Iran in the recent decade shows a increasing trend which amounted from 8% in 1999 to 18% in 2005  Using parametric and non-parametric econometrics methods, in this research we aim to study the behavior of individual married females labor participation. Our dataset consist of the annually budget survey of 2006 which is reported by statistical center of Iran. Our findings from parametric analysis show that the number of kids less than 6-years old, non-labor income and husband’s monthly income are the main determinants of women’s participation in the labor market, and they affect negatively the probability of labor participation. Moreover, the effect of age is positive but decrearsing, however individula’s education level increases the probability. Number of children older than 6-years is not a significant explanatory variable in the model. On the other hand, results of the non-parametric model are in some extent different. Findings indicate that individual labor participation have identical pattern for all of females. Namely; reaction of individuals to explanatory variables are in the same directions. Number of kids (less or greater than 6) are the leading force for market participation in both the rural and urban areas.

Economics is a science in which a lot of intellectual traditions have emerged, raised and declined. All these bodies of doctorine aspired to the name of economic theory. Among these systems of thought, following marginalistic revolution, a tradition emerged, called by veblen "neoclassical economics" which was later came to be known as orthodox economics, because of its power and dominance. Besides the term "orthodox", another term that makes matters somewhat vague is "mainstream". This paper focuses on the study of meaning and concept of "orthodox economics" and explores whether there is any differences between mainstream and orthodox economics. Indeed the main contribution of this paper is to put some doubt on the views of some economists, like Lawson, who have claimed that orthodox economics is not lively and refering to it would be useless. In contrast, this paper tries to reveal that although the emergence of different intellectual traditions is a fact in mainstream economics, orthodox economics has the lion's share in it. That leads us to this conclusion that in additio to mainstream emphasis on mathematics, which is, according to Lawson, the most important characteristic of mainstream economics, this tradition didn't desist some other characteristics. For example, among other things, we can underline the followings: methodological individualism, equilibrium-seeking, and optimization. The findings of this article have some other momentousness, that is, according to them, we can draw a relatively better seperating line between heterodox and orthodoxy economics.

In this paper, we have estimated the memory of theTehran stock exchange indices. The estimation of fractional differencing parameter is carried out by various methods such as MLE, NLS, Hurst Exponent, GPH, Lo, whittle and wavelet.The estimation results of whittle, wavelet, Hurst, and Lo methods allow us to conclude that the returns on stock indices (TEPIX, TEDPIX, TEDIX, Financial index and Industrial index) have long memory. The results obtained from GPH method show the existence of long memory in all indices of the Tehran stock market with the exception of TEDIX.Since estimations which obtained from ML and NLS methods are not significant in almost all intervals, we do not use them for studying the trend of the market’s memory.The results also show the memory of the Tehran stock exchange does not have an important trend. In the other words, in our study period the efficiency of the market does not show any significant changes.

Make or buy decision is one of the main areas of decision making for managers. Transaction cost economics (TCE), as an influential economic approach to the theory of the firm, tries to put forward a theoretical framework for this important decision. From TCE perspective, the greater the asset specificity, the more the behavioral uncertainty and the more the transaction frequency, the more will be the probability for the firm to decide on make rather than buy. Of course, this theoretical prediction is recommendable to managers only if empirical data supports it. The purpose of this paper is the empirical evaluation of TCE's hypotheses by employing data about the decision making of exporters of hand-woven carpets, collected through survey. The results confirm the theory's prediction about the asset specificity of the firm but do not confirm the expected effects of behavioral uncertainty and frequency of transactions on exports.

The purchase of insurance may cause the insureds to increase the costs of insurance companies, compared to their estimation of costs. If after the demand of insurance services, the loss ratio of insurance companies increases because of consumer behavior, moral hazard will be evident.In this paper, after introducing the literature, the presence of moral hazard in Iran Insurance Company is tested via a non-parametric method.We assess the relationship between the value of cars and purchase of collision insurance in order to test for existence of moral hazard. If the percentage of low value cars in bottom quantiles among purchasers of collision insurance is high, the hypothesis of non-existence of moral hazard is rejected. Our study shows the hypothesis of non-existence of moral hazard is rejected. In other words, a considerable fraction of low value car owners purchased collision insurance. We conclude that there exists moral hazard phenomenon in Iranian car insurance market.