JOURNAL OF THE MARCO AND STRATEGIC POLICIES
Year:2017 | Volume:5 | Issue:17 |Papers Count:8

In recent decades, a global tendency towards the knowledge-based economy has become human capital and effective labor to one of the major factors of economic growth and has led to increasing willingness of governments and individuals to invest in higher education. Generally, considering higher education as an investment and development of educational systems on the one hand and increasing the share of education in GDP and the national budget, on the other hand, has attracted the attention of economists and planners to evaluate the effectiveness of investment in education. One of the most effective techniques in this field is Cost - Benefit Analysis (CBA) that by using it planners can decide on the allocation of resources to different levels of higher education. In this study, based on cost - benefit analysis to estimate the private and social rates of return to higher education in the humanities. For this purpose, two ex-ant and ex-post implementation methods have been used. In the ex-ante method using data collected about the expected income of undergraduate, Master's and Doctorate students of humanities in Tabriz University expected a private rate of return to education is estimated.Also, in the ex-post method, using the data collected from state employees with a degree in Humanities group, achieved private rates of return is calculated. At the end, the social rate of return for bachelor, master, and doctorate are calculated. Based on the results the rate of return is negative in all three levels. This indicates the lack of an appropriate return on human capital in the country.

Iran's banking system nowadays, is facing new challenges in joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), i.e. foreign banks and private banks entering the system and rises in financial and credit institute's activities. On the other hand, following the implementation of administrative system general policies, the banking system will also conform with it. In this paper, in order to rank the banks, several indexes are determined. The ranking provides a competitive environment for the banks to implement these policies properly. The indexes are defined according to recent researches in foreign countries and indexes of Balanced Scorecard method and corporate social responsibility attributes are considered. After identifying 6 main criteria and 25 sub criteria their weights are determined by the Analytical Hierarchy process (AHP) based on a sample of 8 experts. Thereafter, the score of each bank in each sub criteria is identified by use of financial information of the considered banks, experts and banks customers. Finally, the considered banks are prioritized using Fuzzy TOPISIS method. Results show financial aspect with a weight equal to 22 percent and social aspect with a weight equal to 16 percent are the most and less important, correspondingly. in sub-indexes, return of investment with the weight of 0.096, reducing the operation cycle time with the weight of 0.094, net income ratio with the weight of 0.079 and less energy consumption with the weight of 0.073 are the most the most important, respectively.

The present research aimed to pathologies emerging ministries in Iran using the descriptive method of the survey research type. The theoretical basis for the research was the system general policy, especially in the administrative system. The study statistical population was the expertise of the planning and budgeting organization. We selected 72 of them related to the topic as an example. A researcher made questionnaire containing 30 questions on the Likert scale was provided for them. The questionnaire reliability was calculated using Cronbach's alpha coefficient equal to 0.946. To analyze the research data, two levels of descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were used. The study results showed that the merger of ministries did not affect the reduction of bureaucracy, accelerating decision-making, increasing customer responsiveness, reducing human resources and reducing interference of duties, but the state cost was reduced. However, this might have occurred due to factors such as economic sanctions, government revenue cuts, and budget cuts in the administrative sector.

Because of the importance of the unpredictable changes in government expenditure on gross domestic production, this paper tries to evaluate the effects of the government expenditure shocks on gross domestic product in Iran. To do this, at the first stage, government expenditure shocks are driven by the Hodrick-Prescott Filter. Then using these shocks, considered model will be estimated. The method of model estimation is auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL). The effect of the lag of gross domestic product on current GDP is positive and significant. While the second lag of this variable on current GDP is negative. Only the third lag of government expenditure shocks has the significant effect on current GDP. That is, if the government expenditure shocks happen, it will affect the GDP after three years. According to the results, the coefficient of this variable is negative. So there is a converse relationship between government expenditure shock and gross domestic product. If there will be a one-unit shock in government expenditure, after three periods (year), gross domestic product will decrease 0.84 units.

The economic liberalization and strengthening financial markets play a crucial role in economic growth. That is why in economic literature there has always been a great emphasis on promoting a stable and sustainable growth through financial development. In the last few decades, countries with more financial openness and more developed financial markets have experienced higher economic growth. A poor approach to financial markets has caused some people to regard them as simple factors of profit or loss resulted from fluctuations in the prices of financial assets, nonetheless, due to the immensity of the impact of financial sector on economy, nowadays, economic growth is not believed to be achieved without an efficient financial sector. This study aims to investigate the impact of liberalization and financial development on economic growth in OPEC countries during 1980- 2014 using panel data and GMM methods. The results show significant positive impacts of financial openness and development on economic growth for OPEC countries. Also, lagged dependent variable, human capital, inflation rate, trade openness, population growth rate and government expenditures have significant positive effects on economic growth.

In this article, the nonlinear relationship between liquidity and value added of agriculture sector is investigated based on STAR method during 1960-2011. The results of nonlinear STAR method suggest that the estimated value of threshold parameter and transfer rate parameter are -0.0309 and 11.7424 respectively. The high value of parameter shows the high transfer rate from regime one to two. As can be seen, the effectiveness of variables in regime one is different from regime two. In regime one and two, the coefficient of the value of agricultural exports' variable, are 0.1447 and 0.2093, respectively. In other words, the increase in the value of agricultural exports in both regimes causes the increase in value added of the agriculture sector. The general coefficient (the coefficient of the variable plus the coefficient of the first lag of that variable) of real exchange rate variable in regime one and two is 0.3025 and 0.1575, respectively. Based on these results, the real exchange rate in both regimes has a positive effect on value added of the agriculture sector. The general coefficient of liquidity variable in regimes one and two is 0.2142 and 0.6424, respectively. The general coefficient of the variable of the price index of agricultural products is not of the same sign in two regimes unlike the other three variables, and is -0.2587 and 0.30722, in regimes one and two respectively.

This paper studies the effects of fiscal policy on private consumption in developing countries. We use annual data for 50 countries which have high or upper middle income in 1980-2014. Estimation of the model using GMM and Panel VAR methods show that government expenditure and tax variables have Keynesian effects in these countries. In the other words, according to results of GMM estimation, government expenditure has the positive and significant effect on household consumption expenditure and tax on income has the negative and significant effect on household consumption expenditure. Also, the results of PVAR estimation show that tax shock has the negative effect on private consumption and government expenditure shock has negative but instability effect on private consumption.

Experts believe that Islamic Republic of Iran’s joining to World Trade Organization (WTO) have tremendous benefits for the country such as improving the domestic economy as well as boosting international ties and partnerships. Iran has filed the application to join the WTO in 1996 but ever since it’s efforts have been marred by a variety of reasons, both interior country problems and exterior barrier such as opposition of USA to Iran’s membership. This research aims to explore the efforts made by Iran during recent decades in regard to the implementation of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) as well as the WTO accession. Furthermore, it has been concluded that while Iran made significant steps forward to alter its actions and Grand Strategy of National Development in order to further reconcile with the WTO criterion, there are still irreconcilable differences between Iran’s domestic economy and the standards required by the World Trade Organization and global economic sphere. This article seeks to study the plans and actions of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the direction of national development and accession to the World Trade Organization and It has been attempted to answer the question of whether Iran's national development plans and strategies have prepared the country for accession to the World Trade Organization.