JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND MODELING (JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS)
Year:2018 | Volume:9 | Issue:1|Papers Count:6

The relationship between energy price gap and import value of Iran from major trade partners is one of the main issues in international trade literature and has been considered empirically in recent years. So, in this paper by using Sato and Dechezleprˆ etre index, the energy price gap has been calculated and then, the empirical model has been estimated between Iran and major trade partners during 2000-2016. The empirical findings of this study reveal that the spillover effect has been confirmed for spatial Durbin model. Moreover, the energy price gap has negative and significant impact on the import value of Iran from main trade partners. In other words, with increase of energy price gap, the import of Iran from its major trade partners decreases. The other findings of this paper indicated that the similarity index and real effective exchange rate variables have negative and significant impact on the import value of Iran from main trade partners. Moreover, energy price gap between Iran and major trade partners during the period of study is asymmetric. That means the increase and decrease effects of energy price gap on the import value of Iran is not equal.

It is expected that high revenues of natural resources provide the necessary capital to improve economic development and growth in resource-rich countries. But the economic performances of these countries has been weaker in comparison with similar countries without natural resources’ endowment in recent decades. In this study, the role of oil revenues in relationship between financial and total economic growth and the growth of non-oil sector in Iran is investigated during the years 1969-2017 using vector error correction model. The results show financial development has a positive effect on economic growth in both cases, but the effect of oil revenues on economy and its fluctuations has a negative effect on the relationship between financial development and economic growth. In the second part, the same model is estimated for the economic growth of the non-oil sector. The financial sector's development has a greater effect on the economic growth of the non-oil sector and the smaller negative impact of oil revenues on it.

This study examines the effect of government size (government consumption expenditures as a share of GDP and government investment expenditures as a share of GDP) on social capital by using the panel data of the provinces of Iran during 2006-2013. In this regard, based on the Pathname and Coleman approach to measuring the social capital in the provinces, three levels of participation, trust and cohesion are considered and to combine the indicators, the factor analysis method has been used. Also, estimation of models was performed using panel co-integration analysis and Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). The results show that the government consumption expenditures as a share of GDP and government investment expenditures as a share of GDP and total of these two shares have a negative and significant effect on social capital in provinces of Iran. Therefore, one of the ways to strengthen social capital in the provinces is to adjust government activities.

In the economic literature, financial decentralization theories have been considered as a tool for increasing efficiency and productivity of public sector and promoting balanced regional growth and development. This increase in regional efficiency and growth could lead to attraction of private investment and provide a ground for endogenous and sustainable development in local areas. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to investigate the effect of revenue and expenditure decentralization on private sector investment in Iran Provinces during 2005-2016 using Generalized Method of Moments method. The results confirm the nonlinear relation between indicators of financial decentralization and private investment. This relationship for revenue decentralization is U-shaped (due to inequality distribution of income sources and unbalanced growth in some provinces), and for expenditure decentralization is inverted-U shaped (due to reduction in final benefit from public infrastructure expenditures). In addition, relationship between inflation, real production of each worker, urbanization rate, and research and development expenditures with private investment are positive and significant.

About a quarter of different types of energy consumed annually are in the transportation sector in Iran. Gasoline and diesel are the most important source of energy consumed in this sector. This study uses the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to evaluate the main factors affecting the gasoline and diesel for the transportation sector in different provinces in Iran during 2006-2014. The evaluated factors are per capita income, the price of gasoline and diesel, per capita changes in gas and diesel cars stocks, and provincial urban bus fleets. The results show that the per capita gasoline and diesel consumed relative to the price changes in the short runare low elastic. The short-run price elasticity of gasoline is 0. 14, the short-run price elasticity of diesel is 0. 13; while the elasticity of income for gasoline and diesel is about 0. 3 in both main models. An increase in per capita stock of gasoline cars has a positive effect on per capita gasoline and diesel consumption, while the per capita increase in diesel cars stock capacity has a negative impact on the per capita consumption of gasoline and diesel. The results also indicate that the urban bus fleet has not had an impact on fuel consumption per head. Based on the results of this study, the goal of a change in fuel consumption should be on people's per capita income, leading to reduced consumption and behavioral change.

Banking stability is considered as one of the most important economic topics of every country. Increasing share of private banks is a factor which can influence banking stability. This paper investigates the relationship between increasing share of private banks and banking stability across different levels of institutional quality in Iran and using unbalanced panel dataset. Accordingly, the generalized method of moments and a panel smooth transition regression model were used to estimate. The results obtained through the generalized method of moments indicated that increasing share of private banks, is negatively associated with bank stability. Furthermore, an improvement of the institutional quality can reduce the adverse influence of increasing share of private banks on bank stability. The results obtained through the use of the panel threshold regression model further revealed that institutional quality has a threshold value which can affect the relationship between share of private banks and bank stability.