Journal of Economic Policy
Year:2020 | Volume:11 | Issue:22|Papers Count:12

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of optimal monetary policies with heterogeneous agents in agent-based models. In this study, the influence of different people's expectations, on shaping the macroeconomic variables is evaluated. Also, the effects of monetary policies are investigated with regard to different behaviors in terms of distributing the brokers and the economic changes in the pattern of meeting expectations in general dynamic random equilibrium models. The new heterogeneous-agent Keynesian model provides insights into the redistribution of monetary policies and business cycles. The recent literature helps to understand optimal monetary policies under certain conditions. The problems involved in the analysis of optimal monetary policies emerge from the fact that the new Keynesian models based on the behavior of economic heterogeneous agents describe the economic status based on the distribution of wealth. The results obtained from this study indicate that, under discreet conditions, the efforts of monetary authorities can lead to variations in inflation if they redistribute the wealth in favor of families who are in debts and lie at the bottom of the list of priorities for getting a share of net wealth.

In oil economies such as Iran, the exchange rate in the informal market is an important variable influenced by oil price variation. Accordingly, and considering the importance of oil and its price in the Iranian economy, this study seeks to evaluate the effect of the global oil price on the unofficial exchange rate (dollar) in an asymmetric shape alongside the inflation gap between Iran and the United States. For this purpose, model estimation was done using linear and nonlinear ARDL approaches and monthly data during a period from Jan., 1983 to December, 2017. The results indicate that, in the symmetric approach, oil price shocks have negative effects on the informal exchange rate just in a long run. According to the nonlinear approach, however, oil shocks have an asymmetrical effect on the informal exchange rate of Iran. The positive impacts of oil prices on the exchange rate in both the short and the long terms are significant, but the negative impacts are not significant on the exchange rate. Also, the inflation gap between Iran and the United States proved to have a significant effect on the exchange rate with both linear and nonlinear patterns and in the short and long runs.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of monetary policies based on heterogeneous agents. The heterogeneity of agents was examined for its effects on nominal and real sectors. In order to analyze the real sector in this study, the modeling of entrepreneurial firms was based on the protection of property rights. The results indicated that, under discretionary circumstances, the attempts of monetary authorities to redistribute wealth to the borrowing households, which has a higher utility than net wealth, can lead to changes in the inflation fluctuation. However, under the terms of the rule, the inflation pressure will be offset by changes in expectations of the future inflation over time. Also, the results indicated that, if the business environment improves and the index of the protection of property rights becomes favorable, the effect of monetary policies on the real sector will increase. Moreover, under discretionary circumstances, the attempts of monetary authorities to redistribute wealth to the borrowing households, which has a higher utility than net wealth, lead to changes in inflationary biases. However, under commitment circumstances, inflation pressure will be offset by changes in expectations for future inflation over time.

In the Iranian economy, a part of the financial needs and liabilities of the government is always financed by the Central Bank. With an increase in the government debts to the Central Bank, monetary policy gets passive and implemented in line with fiscal policies. Consequently, the functions of the monetary policy are disrupted, and it deviates from its goals. This can have undesirable impacts on the macro-economy. So, this study aims at the macroeconomic effects of the government debts to the Central Bank in Iran during the period of 1973-2017. To this end, a SVAR model is used. The result of the research showed that the government debt to the Central Bank has had no significant effect on the ratio of aggregate demand to aggregate supply, real exchange rate and the relative price of non-tradable goods to tradable goods, but it has significantly increased the prices over a period of three years and decreased the GDP over two years. In the long run, the government debt to the Central Bank has explained 10. 8 percent of variation in the general level of prices and 11. 25 percent of variation in the GDP per person. These results indicate that the Fiscal Dominance and the Fiscal Theory of Price Level can account for this situation in the Iranian economy.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the relationship between financial development and poverty in Iran. Considering the existence of different indicators in the financial development literature, in order to introduce a combination of the variables for financial development, the Principal component analysis (PCA) method was used. This method takes into account most of the dimensions of financial development to construct a composite index. The Poverty Index (SST) was also used as a poverty indicator. In order to test the relationship between the variables, the Autoregressive Distributed Lag model (ARDL) was used. After the second-rate financial development index was introduced, the non-linear effects of the relationship between financial development and poverty were evaluated for the period of 1395-1368. The results indicated that the financial development variable had a negative and significant effect on poverty. In other words, improving the financial situation would lead to poverty reduction in the society. The coefficient of the second power index was negative and significant, indicating that there is a reverse U relation in the case of the financial development and poverty in Iran.

According to the role of the banks in the economy of a country, it is important to study their performance and efficiency. Bank decisions about diversification have significant effects on its performance. By prorating fixed costs, minimizing expected bankruptcy costs and improving resource allocation, diversification can bring revenues for the banking sector. These revenues are called diversification profits. The profits have significant effects on bank efficiency and risks. In order to investigate the effects of diversification profits, this paper estimates a non-linear cost function for some chosen banks of Iran during the period of 2006-2017. Introducing a new method, quasi-diversification profits are extracted in the form of four scenarios. Then, using a censored regression pattern (Tobit method), the effects of those profits on the efficiency of the banks are investigated. The results indicate that the relationship between quasi-diversification profits and bank efficiency depends on the scenarios in which those profits are extracted.

Since long, fractional reserve banking has played a role in creating private money and caused economic problems such as depression, inflation, increase of public debts, and so on. Currently, full-reserve banking proposed as a solution to make reforms is supported by many economists. This study presents a stock-flow consistent model of full-reserve banking for Iran's economy. Money creation at the time of government budget deficit under full-reserve banking can provide almost zero inflation and full employment. The amount of government debts has remained unchanged, but the wealth of households has increased. The amount of bank deposits and loans has also increased in these conditions, and the liquidity of banks has been at its optimum level. This study also included the oil sector (model innovation) to examine the process of allocating oil resources to the national development under full-reserve banking. It is found that an increase in the current expenditures will increase the allocation of oil resources to capital expenditure and reduce the resources of the development funds. However, in a new steady state, all the oil revenues move toward the national development funds and, in this case, the government experiences a small budget surplus that will persistent.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of firm credit constraint on unemployment in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model within the 1996-2017 period. In this study, the financial friction occurs through the existence of incomplete contracts in the market. In this model, the limitation of borrowing for the firm is in relation to the stock of capital, which leads to a very slow response of the labor market to productivity momentum. A characteristic of this pattern is that, in every period, employment (or unemployment) comes from the conditions that prevail the labor market. In each period, the number of people recruited depends on job opportunities created by businesses and the number of the unemployed. In this case, if the number of job opportunities is low or the number of the unemployment is high, voluntary unemployment emerges, which is more compatible with the Iranian economy. The results show that the credit impulse caused by the firm's limitation in the financing of investment in the country increases unemployment. The results also indicate that the limitation of firm credit in the borrowing process leads to a decrease in job capacities and the probability of finding jobs in the market.

The study of the sources of exchange rate fluctuation is of great importance to the monetary authorities of a country. In the present study, Taylor and Mccallum rules are used to examine exchange rate fluctuations, including the impulses of oil, the impulses of risk premium, the impulses of supply, the impulses of demand, and the impulse of monetary policy in a structural vector auto-regressive framework in the period 1991: 1-2017: 4. The results of the shock reaction indicate that the exchange rate reaction to the impulses of risk, demand and monetary policy is positive but negative to the impulse of oil. This result is the same according to both Taylor and Mccallum rules, although there are differences in the size of the reaction. The exchange rate reaction to the impulses of supply is negative in the Taylor model and positive in the Mccallum model. The results of variance decomposition also show that, in the Taylor model, the demand and monetary policy shocks, and, in the Mccallum model, the risk premium shock have the largest share in the exchange rate fluctuation. In this study, Taylor and Mccallum models are compared, and it is concluded that the Mccallum rule is more powerful than the Taylor rule in Iran's economy to control the impulses. Indeed, due to the fixed interest rate system, the interest rate mechanism is not effective in the Iranian economy, but the liquidity control policy is a rational policy.

The substitution of the natural gas for other fossil fuels during last few years has led to a siginificant increase in its share in the energy mix. The main goal of this research is to investgate the resiliency of the Iranian gas distribution system using Lyapunov exponent. On cold days of the year, up to 85% of natural gas is consumed in the household sector. Therefore, temperature fluctuation, as a shock to the consumption of natural gas in the household sector, was considered as an indicator for measuring the resilience of the natural gas distribution system. In order to calculate the biggest Lyapunov power, the time delay and the encompassing dimension need to be calculated. To calculate the time delay, mutual information average function was used. Kao method was also used to calculate the encompassing dimension. Finally, Rosenstein method was used to calculate the biggest Lyapunov power. The results showed that the consumption of natural gas occurs in a chaotic process. Therefore, the gas distribution system is not resilent enough. Morevoer, regarding Lyapunov power before and after the subsidies reform, an improvement was observed in the resilence of the Iranian gas distribution system after the implementation of the law of subsidies reform in Iran.

The use of revenues from natural resources, including oil, has always been of interest to politicians, economics professionals as well as various social groups. With the assumption of the Dutch disease in Iran’ s economy, this study seeks to explore the management and optimal allocation of oil revenues. Various scenarios on the allocation of oil revenues have been reviewed by the National Development Fund. In the first scenario, it is assumed that all the oil revenues are consumed in every corresponding year. In the second scenario, all oil revenues come into the National Development Fund every year. In the third scenario, oil revenues are allocated for 5 percent of the GDP. Finally, in the fourth scenario, 10 percent of the oil revenues enter the National Development Fund each year and the rest is spent on government costs. According to the results of the first scenario, i. e. increased economic growth, Dutch disease is increasing and households are the most affluent in the community. In the second scenario, there are very limited growth effects. The third scenario leads to worse trading conditions in the short term. In the fourth scenario, although gross domestic product is less than that in the first scenario, it seems to be the best mode for growth and flexibility in the long run. This is because, with the National Development Fund, the country has an incentive to use oil revenues even at low oil prices.

This study seeks to investigate the effect of corporate tax elimination on the government income. The assumption of the research is that, by eliminating the corporate tax, firms will not have the incentive to create informal sales. The main goal of companies may be creating a false financial statement to reduce taxes on profits. However, the VAT burden is not on those firms; they unwittingly pay less money to the government with low sales announcement. So, government revenues may increase if firms do not have the incentive to conceal their taxable product sales. In this research we try to compare the tax revenues of the government in these two situations. To do this, in a stochastic process with 12, 000 different modes of finished cost structure of firms, the current situation of the government's tax revenues is compared to situation where the corporate tax is eliminated. The empirical results show that, in Iran, the total tax revenues of the government will increase if corporate taxes are eliminated.