THE JOURNAL OF PLANNING AND BUDGETING
Year:2018 | Volume:23 | Issue:3|Papers Count:6

In order to implement inflation targeting policy, it is crucial for monetary policy makers to know how prices (CPI's components) respond to monetary policy shocks. In fact, due to market imperfections and price stickiness, monetary shocks could bring about real effects. In this paper, we use VAR framework and prices stickiness test to examine the impulse response functions of CPI's components to one standard error in liquidity (M2) by using seasonal data over the time period 1369-1390 (1990-2011). Our empirical findings show that 1) Monetary shocks have a lagged effect on disaggregated prices and most prices respond to a monetary shock with a considerable delay, and 2) There is a substantial difference among CPI's components response to monetary base shocks. Therefore, our findings imply the existence of price stickiness, but the intensity of stickiness in CPI's components is different. On the other hand, the difference in the market structure of production of goods and services can explain the difference in their price responses to monetary shocks.

In this paper, we examine how firms are affected by recessions through three transmission channels (domestic demand, financial market conditions, and international trade). Accordingly, five different indices of performance (production, sales, profit, investment, and value added) are defined, for which the effects of the aforementioned channels are measured. Using panel data of “ Annual Survey of Iranian Manufacturing Enterprises” at the plant level for the period (2003-2012), the indices are measured for the level of industrial activities and the level of firm as well. Our results show that international trade and financial market conditions have the most significant role in explaining firms’ performance in the 2008-2009 recession. Firms with high dependency on external finance or those that export larger shares of their products had relatively lower performance; however, those firms that import larger shares of their materials performed better compared to others. In contrast, in the 20122013-recession, the recession propagated mostly through domestic demand. Moreover, exporting firms demonstrate better performance, and the effect of importing intermediate goods is statistically insignificant.

The extant literature pertaining to endogenous growth theory that underlines human capital puts more emphasis on the role of knowledge and education, rather than the impact of social damages on economic growth. Nonetheless, the spread of social damages, such as the weakening of family bonds through divorce, and the surge in crime and addiction in society, can affect economic growth by reducing human capital and productivity. On the other hand, a part of the spread of social damages is due to economic factors. The present study attempts to show the existence of an interaction between macroeconomics and social damages in Iran's Economy by developing a new Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model emphasizing the role of human capital. For this purpose, a composite index of social damages was established, in which divorce, drug addiction and crime rates were focused upon. This index, on one hand, affects economic growth and, on the other hand, is affected by macroeconomic conditions. The results show that negative supply shocks, through increase in poverty, unemployment and inflation, lead to the spread of social damages, such as divorce, addiction and crime. In addition, increasing social damages leads to reduction in economic growth by reducing human capital and productivity.

Natural resource management is of great importance for the countries with abundant resources to ensure capital accumulation and economic growth. The aim of this paper is to estimate capital stock accumulation in Iran on the basis of Hartwick’ s Rule. The question is how much capital would be ideal for Iran’ s economy? The results show that, based on Hartwick’ s rule, capital accumulation is 1. 5 to 1. 7 times the capital available, which in turn means that a large portion of the annual natural resource revenue is consumed and net saving is negative. When these findings are revalued according to Hartwick’ s Rule, adjusted in terms of natural resources rent (particularly oil rent), it indicates that if our economy has allocated 50 to 60 percent of natural resources rent to investment, then the adjusted Hartwick’ s rule would be observed. In other words, in the existing institutional arrangement, the optimal adjustment coefficient for allocating resource rent to investment and consumption is between 0. 5 and 0. 6, demonstrating this fact that Iran’ s economy holds the adjusted Hartwick’ s Rule at a low level.

This study attempts to analyze the economies of scale and scope of Iranian public universities through estimating the cost function of 75 public universities. For this purpose, the quadratic cost function form is used to estimate the cost function of universities. Furthermore, the research model is estimated by using the panel data technique. The results show that there are no general and specific economies of scale in the studied universities. Moreover, there is a significant gap in the average scale of the studied universities with respect to a desirable economic scale. The economic scale of the universities is different in different degrees, and overall, the economic scale of different degrees are about 1. 25 to 2 times their extant situation. Due to the growth policy of the new universities in the past two decades, many smallscale universities have been established that still have a considerable capacity for quantitative and qualitative development. Investigating the economies of scale and scope indicates the existence of economies of scale in Iranian public universities; Accordingly, it can be concluded that the average cost of noncomprehensive universities is higher than that of comprehensive universities. Hence, the integration of universities is strongly advised to achieve economies of scale.

Moral intelligence is one of the factors influencing the performance of individuals in team activities that can lead to a reduction in the level of incentive reversal among team members. In this regard, the present study aims to investigate the effects of moral intelligence on the performance of individuals and the occurrence of the incentive reversal among team members in an experimental environment using simultaneous and sequential games. To this end, 182 students from Yazd University were selected as a sample, each played 12 games (6 sequential games and 6 simultaneous games), and a total of 2184 observations were collected. The results of this study were categorized into two levels: individual and group; the results of the individual level showed that moral intelligence has no effect on the incentive reversal, but the results of the group level showed that moral intelligence has affected the incentive reversal. The results of the team level showed that the relationship between moral intelligence and the incentive reversal is negative; this means that by increasing moral intelligence, the degree of incentive reversal in team activity decreases.