Journal of Economic Research
Year:2013 | Volume:48 | Issue:1|Papers Count:14

The hypothesis which more educated women experience less fertility has motivated many researches. Current study is also carried out in the same direction of those investigations. The theoretical model is designed based on microeconomics of fertility that show since the substitution effect of rising female schooling surpasses the income effect, the presence of negative relation between the level of education and fertility is more likely. Accordingly, we employed a sample including 1294 observations in Tehran. The results suggest that the fertility declines when women's education increases.

Natural gas is one of the hydrocarbon resources which is consumed vastly in the world. The Asian and European markets, facing with a growing demand of hydrocarbon resources especially natural gas, are the most important consuming markets. Hence, the security of natural gas supply is very important. Based on the estimation of Gas Supply Security Index (GSSI), the amount of vulnerability of selected economies to the potential shocks of natural gas supply is measured. The estimations results show that China and India in comparison with other Asian selected countries have good conditions and on the other hand, the United Kingdom is better than the other European selected countries.

There are many studies measured financial liberalization indices, but none of them studied the Iranian case. Therefore, to fill this gap, in this paper we introduce a comprehensive indicator for financial liberalization which considers various aspects of financial sector reforms. Then, we estimate the index and compare the results with Turkey, Pakistan, Malaysia and India. For the estimation of aggregate financial liberalization index, we used different methods of aggregation such as principal component method (PCM) and simple summation. Our findings show that Iran, Pakistan and India have started financial reforms since the mid 1990s, while Turkey and Malaysia have started a decade earlier, in 1980s. Moreover, the results show that the level of financial reforms in Iran is not very high amongst the countries considered while the index related to Turkey and Malaysia are higher than that of other selected countries.

Regarding the decentralization of credits management, this study examined the effect of fiscal policies on gross domestic product of the Iranian provinces over the period 2001-2009. Therefore, we used dynamic panel data and employed GMM-SYS method to examine the model. The results show that the government expenditure and tax multiplier coefficients are less than one in short - run but greater than one in the long-run, as expected by theories. Furthermore, our findings indicate that coefficient for government expenditures are larger than tax revenues. However, investment expenditure and business cycles of the provinces have no significant and considerable effect on government expenditure multiplier coefficients, either in short run or long run.

Development projects in natural water resources like rivers and lakes, specially transferring water to use in agriculture, domestic and industrial sector without considering environmental values, causes irrecoverable and irreversible damage to ecosystem and future options. If we consider the future generation and species rights, those damages and costs can be very much than we take in.The above problem has shown its results in the development projects in Urmia Lake basin in north-western Iran. In our case study, water of Zarinerood is transferred to use in domestic and agriculture sector that made a lot of irrecoverable damage to the ecosystem. In this paper, we develop an optimal control model for allocating a natural water resource by considering irreversibility. The model shows that allocating of basin’s water for different uses is not an optimal policy. Indeed, it intensifies the environmental irreversibility in that ecosystem.

Transaction Cost Economics (Williamson, 1985) is a theory of the firm in New Institutional Economics that has been applied for analysing economic transaction; especially, make-or-buy decisions or vertical mergers in firms. The contribution of this paper is applying this theory for a political issue that is party formation. Transaction Cost Economics links the party formation to the transaction costs of politicians in different governance structures. So, two types of governance structures for political activities were considered: partisan and individual structures. Then, the factors affecting the cost of a politician in both structures were studied in three groups: the attributes of political transactions (asset specificity, uncertainty and frequency), formal institutions, and informal institutions. The historical evidences are collected about parties in the United States and Turkey show that political institutions in these countries increased politician's costs in individual structure, and they have no choice besides acting in a party structure. But the evidence of political groups in Iran shows that costs of politicians in the party structure is higher than the individual structure. So in Iran, a party which could manage the government has not been formed yet.

Credence goods market is one of the markets that the asymmetric information has transformed it to a missing market. Those goods and services that the applicant cannot determine the exact amount of their expenses due to the asymmetric information are called credence goods. From the economists' perspective, transaction in a market where participants are ignorant about each other is a game with incomplete information. Hence, it is necessary to find a way to achieve a desired and optimal output by leading the individuals' strategic behaviour in incomplete information conditions. Mechanism design, as a sub-discipline of game theory, analyses how equilibrium behaviour depends on the rules. As well, it answers to this question that how rules that implement desired market outcomes look like. In addition, there are internal mechanisms such as Islamic and religious teachings that reduce more social losses arising from asymmetric information in credence goods market with a lower cost.

In recent years, economists have paid attention to the relationship between emotions and productivity. Economists investigated the bi-directional effect of emotion and subjective well-being, such as happiness, on different economic variables, such as productivity, health, income, and so on.In this paper, we try to study the effect of income on labour force happiness in Iran. For this purpose, we employ data over the period 2000-2005. In addition, because the dependent variable (happiness) is an ordered variable, we use an ordered choice model in a panel data framework to estimate the coefficients of the model. The results show that the income has a positive and significant effect on labour force happiness in Iran.

After some affluent decades, in the late 1930s, institutional economics began to wane and lost its shining. In the history of economic thought, there are some reasons for this waning. Among these reasons, some economists had declared that the rise of Keynes provoked the premature sunset of institutionalism. Now, this question arises: "Did Keynes's ideas engender the decline of institutionalism or that of Keynesian economics?" It seems that, an intellectual paradigm dispels another paradigm when there are some basic practical, theoretical, and philosophical differences between the two. Are there any traceable signs indicating such differences between institutional doctrines and those of Keynes? These are the main questions examined in this paper. It will be demonstrated that there are some undeniable similarities between Keynes's economics and institutional economics, namely in philosophical, theoretical and practical arenas.

Social capital can improve industrial growth via different mechanisms. In this study, taking the improvement of technology through social capital as one of the mechanisms, we have analyzed the effect of social capital on industrial growth theoretically and empirically.According to the findings of the article, derived from our cointegration model, and Iranian economic data (1966-2006), social capital affects technology improvement positively in the long run and the short run in manufacturing sector. On the other hand, since industrial growth is influenced by technology positively, innovation is the mechanism in which social capital can enhance industrial growth. Therefore, social capital improvement, in micro, and macro levels, is an important precondition to accelerate technology development.

According to the classical economists such as Ricardo, labour was considered as the only factor of production; while capital, realized in machinery, tools and the like was identified as the accumulated labour and that inferior lands can be exploited due to the use of labour on them. But, in the long run development of capitalism in the western countries, this idea, i.e. labour as the base of production of wealth for human being, lost its importance due to some facts: For years, economic growth rates in major developed countries were lower than the long run interest rates. Evidence from the ensuing economic crisis like the incredible growth of debts, concentration of financial and monetary assets, production capacity expansion at the global level and permanent developments of labour saving technologies, the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a minority of the population has resulted in the decrease in total consumption and increase in saving (though banking rates in major industrial countries have tended to decline relatively). Now at the present time, the fundamental question is how will the capitalist system evolve? Will the capitalist system this time be able to identify its internal and external challenges and to modify itself by using the positive and negative feedbacks? Or, will be destroyed by the internal and external challenges sooner or later? This article tries to find an answer for the above question.

Today, there are three approaches dealing with economic problems: freedom in consumption, inappropriate strictness, and the third approach which is in accordance with the divine innate human or path of righteousness. This article aims to verify the efficiency of the third approach. The "rule of moderation", in terms of the resources specimens, is a modern topic in economics. The research method in this study is using the dynamic and traditional jurisprudence. The criterion for "the middle way" has been determined and its efficiency in economics has been studied. In addition, the role of this rule in economic stability has been examined according to the primary sources of jurisprudence, law and economy. The content of this principle is based on Islamic texts, although there is no such term used explicitly in these references.