JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT (THE ECONOMIC RESEARCH)
Year:2008 | Volume:8 | Issue:1|Papers Count:9

This study aims to investigate the effects of government expenditures on private investment in Iran over the period 1971 - 2005. The government expenditures are disaggregated into consumption and investment expenditures. The empirical studies of the issue are carried out via Johansen cointegration analyses.The evidence suggests that the government investment expenditures complement and stimulate private investment, while the government consumption expenditures have been crowding out private investment.

This paper examines the effects of economic, cultural and environmental variables such as unemployment rate, education, and rural population ratio on the self-employment in Iran's labour market. This study investigates the relationship among variables by using central bank's data for 28 provinces over the period 1996 – 2003.The stylized facts of the study show that the self-employment has high employment capacity in the Iran's labour market. The estimates confirm that in most provinces, the unemployment rate and education have negative effects on self-employment rate while the rural population ratio effects positively the self-employment rate. Base on the evidence, when the level of education increases, it promotes people's incentives to move from self-employment to work in public sector. Moreover, high unemployment affects negatively individual's expectations about the success of self-employment and reduces the self-employment rate.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the effects of changing age distribution on national savings in Iran. We examine this topic within the framework of the life-cycle hypothesis (LCH) based on Ando–Modigliani theory. So, the empirical savings function takes account of changes in the age distribution of the population.This study applies cointegration technique to annual time series data over the period 1966 – 2004. More specifically, an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is employed to estimate savings function. Moreover, an error correction model (ECM) of national savings behavior is also specified and estimated in order to reveal the short run dynamic adjustments of savings towards its long run equilibrium.We find evidence for a significant relationship between population age Structure and national savings in Iran. In particular, the young (age 15 – 24 years) and elderly (55 years and older) population groups have negative impact on national savings, while the working age population (age 25 -54 years) has positive impact on national savings. However, population between 35 and 44 years of age has relatively higher impact on national savings compared with other population groups. Overall, the results suggest that the demographic structure is an important determinant of national savings in Iran.

The Lucas paper entitled “Expectations and Neutrality of Money” (1972) is a seminal paper. This paper introduces the Over Lapping Generation (OLG) model focusing on rational expectations and formulating a stochastically mathematics model. The findings of this paper have been frequently used as a base for the solution of the equilibrium systems in Phillips Curve. From that time until now, many studies have considered the Lucas model and evaluated the results, but none of which considered his model in non stochastic space, stochastic allocation of the old and young generations, and the existence of growth in labor supply. Therefore, central question of our study is to test the behavior of the Lucas model in non stochastic space. Mathematical solutions and foundation analysis are used to test the behavior of the model.The main finding of our study is that the Lucas model will acquire some of contributions in the OLG models by expansion of the model. Moreover, the evidence shows that it is impossible to achieve the same results by modifying the assumptions of the Lucas model and also it is impossible to use the Lucas results in the price equation to analyze and support the classical school theorems.

Based on the forecasts of the fourth five-year development plan of Iran, the current government expenditures have to be financed through non-oil resources. But according to realized statistics of the plan's performance, the ratio of the total tax over the total government expenditures is about 36 percent on average. This means that the Iran's government and tax authorities are faced with a budget challenges in achieving the budget targets. Although having the effective tax policy is important to achieve the tax targets, designing the tax policy is a difficult and complex task and it requires the various tax stakeholders' cooperation in the whole economy, while they have different subjectivity and opinions about the designing of the tax policy and its effects on the economy.In this paper, the Delphi method is used to model the whole decision makings involved in designing tax policy and the fuzzy theory notions are applied for modeling both the linguistic variables and imprecision of the experts' views. Based on the Fuzzy Delphi method, the most effective tax policy is designed and developed when it incorporates imprecision and subjectivity into the model formulation and solution process.

Health Systems aim to improve health by delivering health care services. But sometimes in low-income countries, people become poor when they use these services. So, it is required to analyze the experience of health system financing in the selected countries and develop strategies to improve the efficiency of health system financing. The objective of the paper is to identify the main determinants of health care expenditures in 10 OECD countries over the period 1998-2004. The major determinants of health care expenditures which are theoretically identified comprise the total government revenue earned from health care system, social security expenditures on health, Out-of-pocket expenses on health, and the ratio of ex ante payments of private sector on health over the total health expenditures.The stylized facts of the study shows the principles of equity-base health policy planning are notification of financing mechanisms in health sector, identity of financing model according to the county socioeconomic conditions, financial capacity, infrastructure, capability of implementing selected policies, political responsibility and accountability for these policies.The findings of estimates confirm that family health care expenditures are affected by total Government expenditures on health, Social security expenditures on health, Out-of-pocket expenditures on health, and the ratio of ex ante payments of private sector on health over the total health care expenditures. These results are used to propose some new financing mechanisms to finance health expenditures in Iran. The evidence shows that the following approaches will generate new financial resources and increase the effectiveness of the health policy, and improve justice in the Iran’s health system:• Financing health care expenditures through taxation and more specifically imposing progressive tax rates• Designing and implementing of comprehensive information system• Determining health service prices based on actual costs• Designing and implementing effective strategies to target the health care subsidy's system to the poor and vulnerable populations• Improving the private and public sectors’ cooperations in delivering the health care services• Increasing transparency of the private and public financial contribution in the health care system• Organizing the charity activities in health sector and monitoring their resources and expenditures.

Stock market timing is a very difficult task because of the complexity of the market. Since there are various factors affecting the market and therefore it is not a simple task to predict future stock price and its trend. This paper aims to apply advanced tools and algorithms such as the artificial neural networks (ANN) to model nonlinear processes and predict future stock price and its trend. More specifically, this study explores the abilities of the ANN to enhance the effectiveness of the technical analysis indicators to predict stock trend signals. Using a sample of 50 companies in the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE), the results indicate that the ANN is capable to predict the direction of the short term movement in the future stock price. After considering the transaction costs, the results confirm that there is not significant difference among the returns gained from the ANN method, buy and hold strategy, and the most profitable technical indicators in the market when the trend is increasing. While, the ANN model yields higher returns compared to buy and hold strategy in the market when the trend is decreasing. Nevertheless, in the case of decreasing trend, the finding confirms the trend indicators (moving averages) achieve the highest returns.

ECO is one of the relatively successful regional trade associations over the world and Iran is also an active member since it has been founded. After collapse of the Soviet Union, a group of new independent Moslem countries along with Afghanistan has joined the ECO. Since Russia and China have strong economy and located in the ECO member region, this study examines the effects of joining these two countries in the ECO.Based on the econometric estimates of gravity models, in the first model in which the common border among countries under study is not considered, the joining of Russia will increase the volume of trade among the countries compared to the current situation. In the second model in which the common border is considered, the greatest trade will be achieved when both countries, Russia and China, join the ECO. Based on the findings of three different models, if Russia and China join individually, the average increase in the capacity of trade among the ECO members will be 74.0, 67.4, and 42.1 percentages.