Journal of Economic Research
Year:2009 | Volume:44 | Issue:87|Papers Count:11

In this research, the attempt was made to test the existence of the natural rate hypothesis in Iran, by using a Johansson cointegration test. The results do not reveal any long run relationship between inflation and unemployment in Iran for 1340-1386 periods.Because of the time varying nature of NAIRU, the HP filter was applied to estimate the time series of NAIRU. Comparing the NAIRU time series and the actual unemployment rates reveal that, in the period under consideration (except for 1386), the actual unemployment rate was bove NAIRU. The results indicate that, in the long run, the compensatory monetary policy only lead to high inflation rates. Therefore, for catching up to Nairue position. Sticking to a monetary rule is required.

Nowadays, environmental problems such as air pollution are the most effective factors in metropolitans. So that, the most important effect of environmental factors such as air pollution has been on prices of residential houses. So, investigation the effects of different factors on residential houses shows that prices have special importance. This article has investigated an environmental approach. By using Hedonic Pricing Method, rate of effects of these factors on Tehran residential houses has been investigated. For this research we have used cross section data of 1383, regarding 17 areas of Tehran, by using the OLS procedure with the log-log formulation. For separation of effects of variables which are different for residential units, flats and villas dummy variables have been used. As results, among those variables, square factor of units has the most effects on houses prices. Among physical variables age of building has considerable effects on prices. Environmental variables such as rate of air pollution, according to PSI standard pollution indicator have significant effects. In addition, the closeness of residential houses to airport have negative effect on houses price.

As the main element of economy, human being has requirements the main one of which is the need for food security and healthy nutrition. Unfortunately, in the Iranian society there are two groups of people who do not enjoy food security. These groups include people who either do not have the financial means to provide healthy and nutritious food or those who, despite having the financial means, lack the necessary knowledge regarding proper combination of various food groups. Therefore, the two main factors which play important role in creating people's food security are 1) income (financial ability) and 2) knowledge regarding nutrition and preparation of proper food basket.In this paper at the first time by using fuzzy logic with trapezoidal membership function, data from statistical center and food ingredients tables, a food basket for urban and rural families is defined and we will see that fuzzy logic is preffered to other methods. for this problem (obtain basket food) we have 21 objectives, 27 variables, 10 nutrition and 78 constrains that by using goal programming we receive a food basket which, requires the least cost.The cost of the said basket determines which income groups are capable of providing for their nutritional needs and which are not.Findings of this study indicate that I) Urban families within the first ten percentile point and rural families within the first ten and twenty percentile points do not have the necessary financial means to provide for desired food security.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate causality relationship between emission of carbon Dioxide, the level of national income and energy consumption in Iran consumption of fuel fossil as an input of production or as a final consumption which produces significant amount of pollution such as green house gases in the world. CO2 emission is the most important green-house gases which has the considerable role to global warming during these recent decades. The present paper tries to investigate the Granger Causality between the rate of growth of income and amount of co2 gas emission, labor force, capital level and energy consumption.The results indicates that.1- There exists a causality relation from national income to energy consumption.2- Causality relation between income and co2 gas emission has not been verified. In other words the increase of national income does not have effect on the amount of co2 emission in Iran within the 1974-2005 period.3- There is no causality relation from co2 emission to national income, energy consumption, labor force and capital level.4- Energy consumption causes co2 gas emission.

This research aims to use VaR as a risk measure to find the optimum portfolio in Tehran Stock exchange. In this research VaR which is calculated with parametric method by using the 15 daily returns of 100 companies from March 21, 2001 to November 22, 2007 was added to the Markowitz model of portfolio optimization as additional constraint. By changing the accepted VaR and accepted confidence level, various portfolios designed. Finally the findings indicate that adding VaR constraint to the Morkowitz model may limit the efficient frontier, change it to a point or eliminate it completely. This research differs from comparable research in using the backtesting in a novel way and case study of Tehran Stock Exchange.

The shape of urban development and its impact on economic growth is one of the most important issues in urban economic literature. In accordance to the corresponding theory, economic growth and urban concentration have an inverse-U shape relation. The shape of urban development is related to how resources are spread out in existing cities of an urban system and investigated under the term of urban concentration. Indeed, urban concentration shows that at any point in time resources may be concentrated (accumulated) only in one or a few large cities or spread too thinly across more cities. Three indicators are used for measuring urban concentration: Hirschman-Herfindahl Concentration Index, Pareto Distribution Coefficient and Urban Primacy.In this study we focus on Urban Primacy indicator and examine its effect on economic growth in Iran based on a Solow-Swan growth specification during 1960-2006. Also the optimal level of urban primacy is computed and the effects of its main determinants are examined. The empirical results show that urban primacy influences significantly and dynamically Iran's economic growth.

This paper aims to estimate a model of demand for health insurance and medical care in Iran in the presence of the heterogeneous and latent health status of individual; moreover it tests the asymmetry of information in the health insurance industry of Iran. Our dataset consists of whole family budget survey of 2006. The parameters of model are estimated by G.M.M method and the model used in this arthic1e used the minimum assumption about the insurance refound policies, statistical distribution of individual's latent health status, and selection of insurance type.

This paper attempts to employ microeconomics methodology to answer the following questions: For which group of society the consumption pattern which is used as a basis. To calculate consumer price index (CPI) and inflation rate, stands for is there any difference between inflation rate of poor and rich households in IRAN?Calculations done in this paper show that the consumption pattern which belongs to CPI basket (2004) is close to household consumption pattern which is in the 8th decile of expenditure distribution. Beside the conventional method of calculating expenditure shares of items included in CPI basket, the democratic method is provided to all households to have equal importance (weight) in creating CPI basket. the expenditure share of items included in CPI basket is a simple average of the expenditure share of items across households. In the democratic approach, the expenditure pattern of each household is considered in equal measure in determining the CPI index.The difference between CPI (inflator rate) calculated according to the above mentioned methods is called as CPI (inflation gap) or Plutocratic gap. Analysis of this gap shows that negative plutocratic gap implies higher inflation rates for, households with low expenditure (the poor). The obtained results of calculating inflation gap during 1369-1385 (1990-2006) in IRAN show that in this long period (except the years 1373 and 1374) inflation rate of household with lower expenditure (the poor household) is higher than that of household with higher expenditure (the rich household). This gap is increased when we include CPI quality adjustment.

Unemployment-inflation trade-off is known as Philips curve. This relationship was first defined for England economy by Professor Philips since 1958. Much development has been submitted by different economic schools about this innovation.In this paper, apart from dealing with the New-Keynesians Philips curve, the curve mentioned is estimated for Iranian economy. In addition, we are going to compare the result of this estimation with the result of other studies. The result shows that, in comparison with other standard models, New-Keynesians Philips curve is more corresponding with economic condition of Iran.Considering this matter, unemployment-inflation trade-off exists both in long-run and short-run, however, this relationship is weaker in the long-run and politicians can influence inflation and unemployment rate in the short-run and long-run by demand management policies, but this influence is weaker in the long-run.

This study analyzes the contribution of the Sectoral Total Factor Productivity Growth (TFPG) and the input's growth to the Iran's economy sectors growth during 1345-1383. The major findings show that the average contribution of TFP growth to non-oil output's growth during first, second and third development plans has been 39.5%, 12.2% and 24.8% respectively, amounting to (as estimated) 32.6% during the fourth plan. During the development plans after revolution, the average contribution of TFP growth in service sector to non-oil GDP growth has been more and in agricultural sector less than the other ones. Even though, the average growth of capital stock and sectoral value-added before the revolution has been much more than those after revolution, but the contribution of TFP to non-oil economic growth in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution (i.e. 18.23%) has been more than the ones before the revolution (i.e. 10.9%). Reduction in the growth of capital stock, sectoral value-added and factors productivity during second development plans imply the high vulnerability of economic growth and TFP to external shocks.