JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT (THE ECONOMIC RESEARCH)
Year:2018 | Volume:18 | Issue:2|Papers Count:8

Development of financial markets plays a major role in economic development. The present study estimates the effect of inflation on the relationship between financial development and employment using STR smooth transition regression model in Iran during 1992-2014. The results show that when inflation increases beyond threshold level, quasi-money negative effects on unemployment rate are intensified, and an increase in quasi-money has greater effect on increase in employment. Furthermore, increase in inflation rate and passing threshold level, and increase in capital market volume and domestic credit granted to private sector result in decreasing employment rate. The effect of monetary base on unemployment rate is positive in both regimes, but higher inflation (passing the threshold level of inflation) has intensified the positive effect of monetary base on unemployment rate. In other words, an increase in inflation rate has increased the monetary base, which in turn has reduced the employment level.

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the exchange rate pass-through, the relationship between exchange rate and prices, provided that a shock occurs and changes exchange rate and prices. The key point in this study is that exchange rate is considered as an endogenous variable. This issue is important because exchange rate pass-through due to specific shocks differs from case to case. Hence a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model is presented and simulated for Iran. The accuracy of the model is analyzed by comparing the moments of the model and the moments of the quarterly data from 1988 to 2010. Then, exchange rate pass-through conditional on each shock (technology, oil revenue, foreign output, and demand for money, foreign interest rate and monetary policy shocks) is calculated by the ratio of covariance of the impulse response of price and exchange rate to variance of the impulse response of exchange rate. Finally, aggregate exchange rate pass-through is computed as the sum of conditional pass-through coefficients in each time weighted by the contribution of each shock. The biggest exchange rate pass-through to consumer prices belongs to oil revenue and foreign output shocks which amounts to about 1, and the smallest one is related to technology shock.

The real effective exchange rate and its uncertainty are among the most important macroeconomic variables that affect different economic sectors from various aspects. Since the changes in exchange rate have no identical impacts on all sectors of the economy and regarding considerable importance of industrial development on economic development, this study examines and evaluates the effects of real effective of exchange rate and its uncertainty on the value-added of industrial subsectors based on the two-digit codes ISIC-REV4 using Panel data and Engel-Granger methods during 1979-2014. The results show that the real effective exchange rate is of different effects on various subsectors of the industry while its uncertainty has no effect on sub-sectors’ value-added. Consequently, there is no single exchange rate policy in industrial sector due to different foreign exchange requirements in its subsectors.

This article attempts to examine the impact of stock market fluctuations on macroeconomic variables by designing a New Keynesian approach in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model. For this purpose, first, model parameters are estimated based on Bayesian approach and using of quarterly data from 1994 to 2014. Second, the impulse response functions of variables to innovations in stock price index, monetary shock, technology shock, consumer spending and public investment are investigated. Then, the optimal weights related to inflation gap, output gap and the stock price index gap within the monetary policy function are extracted. According to the results, a shock to stock price index has a negligible effect on inflation and output variables. This may be due to the small size of the stock market in Iran. Finally, the optimal coefficients are determined for inflation and output gaps, stock price index gap, and the central bank deadweight loss under various scenarios. Based on findings, first, the central bank should attribute more weight to inflation in itself reaction functions. Second, a scenario in which the weight of stock price index is zero has less deadweight loss, thus the response of the central bank to stock price index gap leads to a reduction in social welfare. Therefore, when the stock market is booming, the central bank is recommended not to be intervened to reduce liquidity.

The exchange rate overshooting, which results from the monetary disruptions, has negative impact on production and investment in the main economic activities and de-stabilizes the whole economy because of their input-output linkages. Therefore, identifying the causes of economic instability can help to adopt appropriate policies and to create economic stability in the country. The main question is to what extent the exchange rate can cause instability in the economy. To answer this question, first, the exchange rate overshooting was calculated using the Hodrick-Prescott filtering method during 1989-2012. Then, it was introduced into the model by specifying the generalized Solow production function, and finally, the production function was estimated for the main activities of the economy using the panel data technique. The results show that the impact of the exchange rate overshooting on the major economic activities is negative.

According to the Kau and Robin (K&R) hypothesis, an increase in the government's power to collect taxes increases the size of government. In this regard, the main objective of this paper is to test this hypothesis for the Iranian economy during the period of 1971-2014. For this purpose, two variables are used as indicators of government's power to collect taxes: rate of female participation in the labor market and self-employment rate. The estimation method is a canonical co-integration regression (CCR). The results indicate no significant impact of the mentioned indicators on the government size. Thus, Kau-Rubin hypothesis is rejected for the Iranian economy. The FMOLS and DOLS estimators reconfirm the results.

Smuggling is a part of informal economy with numerous negative effects on economy and government revenues. Using E-MIMIC method, this study tries to estimate an index of smuggling to Iran and to examine the causes and consequences of its growth. In order to trace the smuggling of imported goods, we consider the difference between imports and exports to Iran. The results show that sanctions, government intervention in exchange rate market, and real exchange rate are the most influential factors in smuggling. The estimated index shows that smuggling was low during the war and early post-war years due to great subsidies granted by the government to formal importers in the form of low exchange rates. Allocation of subsidized foreign currencies to importers resulted in low under-invoice or even over-invoice of imports in some years. However, over the 2000s, after unification of exchange rates and elimination of the foreign currency’ subsidy, the real size of smuggling increased 9. 55% per annum, on average. In addition, the relative size of smuggling decreased due to higher growth rate in formal imports. The effect of sanctions was extremely significant. As a result of sanctions, smuggling increased from 24 percent of formal imports in 2010 to 60 percent in 2011 and 75 percent in 2014.

In their economic analysis of democracy and its institutions, economists often use methods which are very similar to market analysis. When methods and techniques of economic analysis are used in studying democracy, one of the interesting results is that the performance of the political market is similar to that of economic market. The timelessness of money as private good is an important condition for the optimal resource allocation mechanism in the economic market. In this regard, this article uses the mechanism of the timelessness of money in the economic market in order to allocate advantages and benefits to citizens in the political market optimally. To do this, a monetary model similar to the political market sphere is designed using the concept of Anthony Downs’s (1957) rational voter hypothesis, and applying the idea of Paul Samuelson's (1958) monetary model within microeconomic theory of consumption. Using such model, the timelessness and storability of votes can investigated. The results show that the timelessness of money leads to a superior allocation, Pareto optimality and improvement in the optimal situation of voters.