Financial Economics
Year:2009 | Volume:2 | Issue:5|Papers Count:8

This article reviews the importance of foreign direct investment and examines factors affecting its flow into developing countries A Panel Data technique is employed to estimate the empirical models to explain the relevant factors affecting the FDI into developing countries. Time span covers 1995-2007 for 22 developing countries. The results indicate that factors such as interest rate, domestic investment, size of government growth in foreign exchange earnings and soci-economic condition of the countries are the most important variables affecting the FDI into developing countries.

This paper aims to investigate whether an asymmetrical relationship between oil price oscillations and government and private consumption has existed in the past in case of Iranian economy. The data used for this purpose covers the time span of 1350-1380 corresponding to 1971-2001.Towards this end three analytical techniques have been use to investigate this hypothesis. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) was used to estimates the parameters coefficients. The result has indicated that coefficients of parameters pertaining to government consumption model have higher value than that of private consumption model, indicating that government consumption is far strongly affected by changes in oil prices.It has been further identified that the establishment of Oil Stabilization Fund in year 2000, did not have any significant bearing on the government and private consumption in the wake of changes in oil prices.

Human resource allocation is one of the most important factor which can affect on value added creation in various sector. In this paper based on a dynamic model, we will test the relationship between human capital and economic growth in Iran. Our findings show that such relation is weak because of mismatching between jobs and education field basicly. This matter leads us to a reality which means omission of this inefficiency source can enhands the labor productivity and increase economic growth. Other results confirm that high education labor force has positive effects than low level education (primary and high school) on different sectors value added. So, authorities should consider more on higher education labor force in their planning and polices.

This study aims to examine the optimal loan portfolio policy for Bank-e Saman, using the Markovitz modern portfolio model (1952). Generally, in Iran the Banks are allowed to offer loans to four economic sectors including services, manufacturing and mining, construction and agriculture. Loans offered to production sectors are treated the most risky venture for the banking sectors. However, the results of this study indicate that the Bank-e Saman has pursued a desired diversification policy to maintain its optimal loan portfolio as advocated in Markovitz model. In its optimal loan portfolio policy, service sector has enjoyed the lion's share of 65 percent of bank's total loans portfolio, followed by manufacturing and mines, housing and construction, and agriculture respectively. The distribution of loan portfolio by economic sectors over the period of 1381 to 1385 (corresponding to 2002 to 2006) is proved to be inclined towards the optimal pattern. Yet, due to certain restriction inherited in Markovtz model, some of discrepancies or deviations in optimal loan performance can not be explained. Thus in order to be able to address such shortcomings, the model requires to include some factors such as the real need of credit market, based on the accommodation principle, into model. Besides some factors such as formal and informal regulations have a strong bearing on bank loan portfolios which should be taken into account as well.

The main goal of this paper is to identify the factors affecting the efficiency of banking industry in Iran. Towards this ends, two methods namely, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) have been employed to investigate the issue in detail. The data needed for this study covers the period of 2001 to 2005 and are compiled from balance sheets of commercial banks, specialized banks and also from private banks.The results obtained by the application of DEA method indicate that in terms of economic, allocation, and technical consideration, the average efficiency of banking sectors has been in the order of 56%, 77% and 72%, respectively. In the SFA method, the overall average efficiency of banking system is estimated to be around 34%.the results of our model and its coefficient estimates indicate that the efficiency of banking industry is inversely related to the size of the banks, its overall assets and concentration index while factors such as number of bank branches, its skilled and educated labor force, loan to asset ratio, ratio of credit risk to asset, and e-banking index have a positive impact on efficiency index of banking industry.Promotion of efficiency in the banking sectors can be ensured only when the non viable banks are taking over by acquisition or merging practices.

Natural gas enjoys a significant place among all energy sources and plays an important role in the economy of Iran in meeting the growing energy needs of country. Furthermore the household and commercial sector has the largest share in gas consumption. In this paper attempts are made to delineate factors affecting the household and commercial demand for natural gas with special reference to Gilan province.Towards this end this paper has measured the short run and long run price elasticity of demand for natural gas for household and commercial consumption sector respectively. The findings of this study have indicated that the short run and long price elasticity coefficient is in order of -0.32 and -0.64 respectively. The model has also estimated the short and long run cross elasticity of demand for household and commercial sector. Their respective coefficients are found to be in order of 0.43 and 0.86.

Until the 1980's, business cycle theory and growth theory were treated as two separate and unrelated realms. It was believed that business cycles would cast only short run but not long run effects on growth. Charles Nelson and Charles Plosser (1982) were the first to challenge this view.They argue that shocks contribute substantially to variation in output. King, Plosser and Rebelo (1988) argue that economic fluctuations influence the process of stochastic growth. They suggest that temporary shocks can have permanent effects on the level of economic activity. This new view supports the existence of a link between volatility and long-run growth.This study attempts to delineate more clearly the relationship between growth and output volatility. The focus of the study is to re-examine the negative relationship between growth and output volatility as Ramey and Ramey (1995) have concluded. In this study, Ramey and Ramey's (1995) empirical approach has been expanded by revising sample of countries included in this panel data analysis (developed, developing and other countries with data availability over 1961 to 2007.). Data used for this investigation has been gathered from the recent version of the Penn World Table (Summer-Heston-Aten). In order to estimate output volatility, GARCH technique and Panel Data approach have been used. The result of our model has reaffirmed the findings of earlier studies that the inverse relationship exists between economic growth and output volatility.

Environmental taxes, so called Pigouian or Green tax, are considered as a policy instrument to control pollution. Green taxes are a sort of levies on expenditure and used by government as a fiscal policy tool to prevent pollution activities of any economic agents.in contrast to direct and indirect taxes, Green tax has more advantages, for it can provide revenue for government and also can mitigate the negative effect of externalities. As such it renders a two-sided effect on efficiency ground.Towards this ends, the Rotterdam demand system was applied to this study. The findings of this paper indicate that the adoption of green tax policy would encourage the household to substitute other sources of clean energy for fuels use (oil and gas) and hence contribute to environment protection.