Iranian Journal of Economic Research
Year:2005 | Volume:7 | Issue:22|Papers Count:8

The general equilibrium method has many advantages and disadvantages over the incremental equilibrium method; however, its advantages seem to be more significant. For this reason, during the last decade, many offoria have been made on investigating the effects of economic policy by using a Compatable General Equilibrium (CGE) model. Generally, in these types of models, equations are divided into three categories. The Zero profits in all sectors, market clearance, and balance between incomes and costs. This article exploits the conventional micro and macroeconomics relations such as production functions, costs and so on, in order to simulate Iran's economy in the form of a computable general equilibrium model. To gain the expecting results, it uses the Mixed Complementarity Problems (MCP) technique along with the GAMS software through its modeling process. The purpose of this study is to investigate the consequences of the both decreasing the agricultural sector (agricultural activities) subsidy, and the changes of the labour tax, on the sectoral production and revenue of urban and rural households. For this purpose we used latest social accounting matrix (1375). The results reveal that the reduction of agricultural sector subsidy will have a negative impact on the production of all other sectors. However, for agriculture sector the percentage of this negative impact is more significant than other sectores, also its negative impact on the urban and rural revenue is considerable. The same situation is encountered for the changes in the labour tax. Rise of the laboure tax has the negative impact on all other sectors but its reduction does not make any considerable positive impact on them.

This paper attempt to presents the pattern of distribution poverty among Iranian households calculated by the two criteria, absolute poverty and relative poverty considering socio-economic characteristics (e.g. urban or rural), the household head's educational level, age, occupation, and economic activity, as well as the location of the household's residence. The research results indicate that during the period in review the rural population poverty share to the country's total poverty has exceeded that of the urban peoples, the former following a downward trend and the latter has an upward trend. The households whose head is in the age group above 55 are poorer than those in the other age groups, and the households whose head is engaged in the agricultural activities or in unskilled job are poorer than those in the other occupations. Meanwhile, with regard to the poverty, the results indicate that the highest rate relates to the households whose head is a family worker or a self-employed worker.      

In this paper we examine the effects of nominal variables on the gap of GDP in Iran. The used data is seasonal GDP whiz is computed by traditional methods. In addition, potential GDP is obtained through Prescott filtering. The model is estimated for GDP gap, inflation, market exchange rate growth, and liquidity growth through VAR methods. The results, show that nominal variable shocks influence GDP gap in Iran are in the same direction. Stability of these shocks indicates their long-run effect on the system. Thus, for economic growth, the economic policy must concentrate on production increase, and this would increase the long run production.  

Efficiency of a firm is calculated as a ratio of its outputs to its inputs. There are two different methods to measure efficiency: parametric and non-parametric . In parametric method, by specifying an appropriate production function,and then using usual econometric or statistical tools, its coefficients are obtained and efficiency is calculated. But, in non-parametric method,efficiency of a firm is calculated by using some mathematical optimization methods. In this paper, we used data envelopment analysis (DEA), a specific non-parametric method, the efficiency of sugar factories is obtained. The main advantage of these non-parametric method, comparing parametric one, is that there is no necessity to specify a production function, and also, they provide some ways to calculate the efficiency of multi-product firms. In this study, we measure the efficiency of 33 sugar factories of Iran in 1999. For this purpose, technical and scale efficiency of the sugar factories are calculated. The result shows the average technical efficiency is 69 percent. In addition, the technical efficiency of 7 factories including Neishabour, Piranshahr, Joveen, Isfahan, Eghlid, Miyandoab and Ghazvin is 100% (relatively). Also, the results of the scale efficiency, show that 14 factories satisfy the efficient boundary condition and the average scale efficiency of the factories is about 75 percent. In addition, the rank of the efficient factories is determined, using different ranking methods. Finally, using a bench marking which is introduced by the DEA method, the method under which the efficiency of the factories could be improved is shown.  

Financial repression, according to many scholars is a drag on economic growth and development. To identify factors and their importance on in fluencing financial repression we analysed experts opinion using Delphi Method. We used DEMATEL technique and Graph theory to sequence their importance and feedbacks. The result shows that dependence on oil export revenue is the most important factor causing financial repression and it has increased economic rent and corruption, and it is self-perpetuating. Our findings are consistant with structuralists and post Keynesian views. Reliability of model used is consistant with stylized facts and expert opinion.Besides DEMATEL is a very reliable mathematical model, for this types of study.  

Energy consumption affects economic activities in such a way that one can say that economic growth is subject to energy consumption. Oil products, gas and electercity account for more than 98 percent of total energy consumption in Iran. In this paper an attempt is made to study the consumptions pattern of energy carriers in Iran, using Vector-Auto Regression and Granger Causality Test. The results indicate that price variable is not important determinant of the consumption pattern of energy carriers in the country. However, there are some tendeney to change the energy consumption on the long - run.  

The link between public and private investment and their effects on each other investigated by many economists in the past. In this study, we investigated the effects of some economic variables on private investment. These variables are different types of government expenses (current and development fund). The results suggest that budget deficit leads to expansion of private investment and there is a time-lag for this effect. We used ARDEL Technique and the period of study was 1963-2001.  

Productivity of the factors of production is one of the important indices to measure the advantages of industries in the internal and external level of any country. The productivity growth of the production factors decreases the production costs and increases the competitive power of the producer in the market. Thus, the entrepreneurs prefer to invest on the industries which enjoy both high value added and high productivity. This paper calculates and compares the total, average and marginal productivity of different small and large scale industries of Iran during 1366-1380. The industries are divided according to international classification I.S.I.C, Rev.2 into nine industrial groups. The Cobb-Douglas production function is used for studying and calculating the total and marginal productivity. The average ratio of value added to factors of labour and capital during the period of study is used for calculating the average productivity. The paper concludes that the total, average and marginal productivity of the total small scale industries is less than the large ones. But the productivity of some groups of small scale industries is more than large ones.