Iranian Journal of Economic Research
Year:2012 | Volume:17 | Issue:51|Papers Count:8

It is assumed that there are some changes in the payment system with application of information technology in this field, so that for many of retail payments we do not need cash. Changes in payment methods, create changes in money demand which may have significant economic effects. In this study the effect of changing in payment methods, from paper-based to electronic ones, on money demand function is estimated using a panel of time series data from 2002 to 2010. By applying econometric methods, we conclude that development of electronic payment could have negative effect on money demand.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between the structural and performance variables in 140 Iranian industries, besides investigating structure of industrial markets according to the Four-firm concentration ratio plus cost advantage ratio (CDR). Then the study estimates efficiency level of the industries under the stochastic frontier technique in 4 digits ISIC code so that finally the relationship between the structure and performance based on the SCP pattern has been examined through the estimated efficiency level. Additionally, we applied the bootstrap approach in order to have more precise judgment on the gained results. The findings indicate that firstly the industries with high concentration intensity are more inefficient, in other words there is an adverse relationship between the monopoly power and efficiency in Iranian industries which obviously imply that Unlike the Chicago notion, here the monopoly power does not originate from the efficiency, and we shall look for other possible reasons pertaining to this phenomena.  Secondly, the industries with more intensity of entry barrier are more inefficient, it means that the role of entry barrier due to lack of competition is of significance in creating the inefficiency in the industrial sector. Thirdly, those industries which have more shares of governmental activities compared to private sector indicate lower efficiency. Which mean that there is a negative relationship between the government presence and efficiency of industrial activities.

The main goal of this paper is to derive an optimal rule for monetary policy in Iran. To do so, we estimate the monetary transmission equations and derive the optimal rule by using the dynamic programming method. Our dynamic optimization problem is to minimize the central bank's loss function subject to the transmission mechanism equations. We have modified our loss function to include inflation persistence as well. Using the growth rate in broad definition of money, M2 as our control variable, we estimate the transmission mechanism equations and derive the optimal monetary rule. Our findings indicate that the optimal monetary policy rule can decrease welfare losses and hence is a welfare improving policy. This means that the use of monetary rule is superior to discretionary policy in the case of Iran.

Discussion of the issues and ideas about consumption is important to the economic literature and there are many books and papers in the field. In the other hand Islamic Economics has specific view in the consumption that distinguishes it from conventional theories. However, there are important issues about consumption which are suggested in Islamic Economics. There are two important principles which distinguishes Islamic Economics from conventional economics. These principles include:1) expenses related to the Infaq 2) Prohibition of Israf. The main purpose of this paper is to survey consumer behavior and its optimization according to the mentioned constraints, using the Dynamic Programming Methods. Finally, after modeling it is specified that in the euilibrium path the marginal utility of consumption equals the marginal utility of infaq and the expected rate of return (as of Islamic Finance) and rate of time preference influences the consumption and infaq.

Policy-makers around the world have emphasized the virtues of deregulation. The banking industry in Iran has partly experienced reform after the domestic peivate banks entry since 2000. This study investigates the impact of this policy on economic efficiency of banking sector by using banking data over the period 1997-2006. We measured the economic efficiency of banks using SDEA which necessitated a grasp of technical and allocation efficiency and calculated the model by GAMS software. The purpose of stochastic setting of DEA is accommodating both the inefficiency and the presence of measurement errors. In the second step we used the fixed effect model on panel data to regress efficiency measures on policy variable of entry. We solved the regression model model by Eviews and Stata softwares. Our result show that entry variable has not meaningful effect on efficiency. So economic efficiency can not be differentiated on the basis of policy reform of entry.

The following research attempts to study the effect of personal characteristics on unemployment duration in Yazd city during 2007-2010. The Cox proportional hazard model is used to test the hypotheses in this study. A sample of 1964 individuals who had experienced one term of unemployment during the study period is analyzed. The results suggest that factors such as being a male, being married, number of children, having professional skills, employment background and higher education could decrease the unemployment duration while two factors of age and the spouse employment are likely to have increase this period.

This paper deals with the nature and function of money in conventional (western) theory. This is also an important issue for Islamic economists. In conventional theories money can be categorized in two major forms; Money as a commodity (metalism), and money as a claim (chartalism). This paper argues that conventional theory on money is not fully satisfactory on the role and function of money in either of its theoreizing forms. It examines the flaws and short comings of money in all its forms and concepts and calls for new concepts in theoreizing within Islamic paradigm of economic thought.

In this article the Panzar & Rosse approach was employed to assess the level of competitiveness of the Iranian banking system during 1997-2010. We used panel data for all the 18 banks (private and public) that had been commercially active for at least the last four years. The results indicate that during the period of the study the banking system has been operating under a monopolistic competition system. Using a dummy variable we also were able to show that the competition among the private banks has been stronger than the public banks. And finally the results indicate that with the more private banks entering the market the competition of the whole banking system has improved.