ECONOMIC RESEARCH REVIEW
Year:2006 | Volume:5 | Issue:4|Papers Count:11

The purpose of the present paper is to investigate the economic impacts of gasoline subsidy on economic Growth of Iran. To do so, we have used time series data for the period of 1971- 2002 to estimate a system of simultaneous equations by three stages least squares (3SLS) methods. The results show that during the period under consideration, we have seen a positive but very low impact of gasoline subsidy on Iran's economic growth. In other words ,on average as a result of increasing gasoline subsidy by one billion Rials, the real GDP have increased by 250 million Rials. Also, the average elasticity of gasoline subsidy with respect to real GDP for the period is estimated to be approximately 0.09 indicating an inelastic responsiveness between gasoline subsidy and real GDP. Based on our findings, it is suggested that, the reduction of gasoline subsidy by government and implementing of the guided subsidy policy in Iran's 4th economic development and also in the 20 years economic perspective package, we can expect more favorable economic impact.

The use of CGE models for policy analysis markedly has gained popularity since 1970s. Based on the subject under research and its scope, the Computable General Equilibrium models could be presented and calculated for an economic activity, an economic sector or for the regional, national, and the world. The independence of those models from time series data is the main advantage of using a CGE model in policy analysis. On the other hand, this approach allows economists to be able to examine and analyze the policy change or the effects of internal factors within the system which is interrelated with all economic sectors or the world. In this paper, we present a CGE model for Iran and analyze the effects of government expenditures on GDP, employment and household income. The results show that the increase in government consumption expenditures, reduces GDP, employment and household income. But increasing government investment expenditures in oil, services and construction sectors increase GDP and employment and also increasing government investment expenditures in agriculture and industry sectors, decrease GDP and employment.  

Investigating the household standard of living is an important subject with respect to targeting problem in poverty alleviation programs. By doing so, at first, we can identify the poor, indirectly and then, we can targetize the assistants to them. Most of the studies on standard of living, based on survey data, are confronted with the sample selection error (bias). Sample selection bias is not the only feature of standard of living studies, but also, it occurs when the observations have self-selectivity property, which in turn might result in bias and inconsistency with estimators. The main purpose of the paper is the introduction of a general methodology of correcting selectivity bias, with application to the regression of standard of living in rural areas of Iran.

In this article, we review and evaluate economic aspects of replacing the. Compressed Natural Gas instead of gasoline emphasizing on the environmental problems resulting of using it in transportation sector. To this aim, we review the system of subsidy payment for energy in Iran and trend of producing and consuming of fuel (gasoline) in transportation sector and using ordinary least squares method (OLS) and Auto-Regressive and Moving Average (ARIMA) procedure, those amounts is predicted for 2004 to 2011. Consequently, the difference between consumption and production of gasoline is determined and the probability of economical saving, such as the costs of imports and subsidy of oil products, in case of substituting the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), has been estimated. The result and necessary suggestions have been presented at the end of the research.

The literature of management is inundated with abundant discussion over the need for change and transformation in work processes, organizational culture and technology. But little has been said about change modelling, its implementation and strategic choices in successful implementation of changes. This article presents a few definitions for the concept of strategic change and reviews the conventional models of change. Then a model is selected and analyzed based on which change model is presented for the four major banks in Iran. The present study determines the change strategy for each of the banks under study based on their level of readiness for embracing change. The results of this study show that each of the four banks under consideration has its own particular circumstances and consequently the strategy of transformational change would differ from one to another. This is particularly significant regarding the fact that all four banks are state-owned firms and the change programs assigned to them typically follow a stereotype model. The lack of a contingency plan of transformation, seems to be one of the major reasons for the failure in such programs in state-operated banks in the country.

Based on industry programs and fourth development plan in Iran, products of cement industry will increase twice in 2009. This plan takes over some questions and challenges for investor and producer such as position of cement industry in national economy, facilities of production, supply and distribution, improving of consumer's culture and investment in cement industry. In this survey, Cement consumption function had been estimated for 1961-2011. Econometrics estimations based on Least Square, ARMA and Time Series Models illustrated that cement consumption in Iran would be approximately between 45 to 50 million tons in 2011. Therefore, programmers and investors should consider cement consumptions, export development for regional countries, increasing rate of economic growth and government supervision in construction activities.

In this paper, a model is designed for the prediction of the stock price of the investment companies by using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). For the construction of the model, ANN were used with three layers, sigmoid transfer function, learning rate (η)0.2 and momentum (α) 0.7. The input variables were the net assets, income gained from selling the stocks, income from investment, market value of portfolio, earning per share, P/E ratio of Alborz Investment Company and the output layer were the stock prices of the Alborz Investment Company. The results showed that ANN can be successfully used to predict stock price of the investment companies, although there are complex or nonlinear relationships between the inputs and outputs. The RMSE error of prediction in this study was 0.044.

Providing domestic saving is a determinant factor for economic growth and investment level and while difficult financial condition has surrounded Iran's economy, it has a critical aspect. In fact, Iran's economy need to maintain high saving ratios for financing of investments, offsetting lack of flow of foreign saving in short-run, decreasing the effects of degrowth of normative savings and restricting vulnerability of economy as against the volatilities of oil price. This paper discusses performance of saving section during 1971-2003 in comparison with investment needs of country. In evaluating of determinant factors of domestic savings in Iran, the main effects of such factors on policy setting were considered as well. So, achievements in normalizing foreign debts conditions and enhancement of foreign exchange reserves have simplified running of such policies and have increased efficiency as well.

In this article, the impacts of monetary policy on investment and employment will be evaluated. For this purpose, we have used a new approach in econometrics to analyse the impacts of monetary policy variables, such as money supply, exchange rate and credits on investment and employment, using statistical data. The model that we have used in this study is Vector Autoregressive Model. After estimation of the model and calculation of two criteria, named, Impulse Response Function, Variance Decomposition and analyzing dynamics in the model, we will be able to evaluate the response of investment and employment to the shock of monetary policy variables and also determine relative importance of any shock in variance decomposition. On the basis of the results, response of investment and employment to the shock of credits are more than two other exchange rates and money supply shocks. On the other hand, variance decomposition analysis of investment and employment show that relative importance of credit is more than two other variables.