RAHBORD
Year:2011 | Volume:19 | Issue:57 (SPECIAL SECTION ON ECONOMIC STUDIES)|Papers Count:15

One of the achievements of sociology in the last century was resorting to the theory of social capital. Although a consensus on the meaning of social capital has not yet been achieved among sociologists and social sciences thinkers, its meaning variations have paved the way for being looked from new perspectives. This article first, with due attention to theroots of the concept of social capital, redefines it to cover family capital.Then, it introduces three components which constitute the concept of family capital and dicuss the threats addressed to it in the framework of challenges facing Iranian society. Finally, it presents some recommendations for enhancing family capital. Since this article approaches family affairs from social  capital perspective for the first time, it also emphasizes the necessity of conducting research in this field  in the future.

The present study is extracted from an applied- developmental research in which this basic question is put forward: "Among various factors, what is the role of labour law in Iran's labour market and labour relations?" based on this problem the basic questions are as follows: 1. How flexible is the present law to create equilibrium in Iran's labour market? 2. How successful is the present law in proper regulation of labourrelations and creation of worker and employer satisfaction?In order to respond to these questions, first the data related to theoretical bases and findings of related studies were gathered through library reviews and their contents analysed. Second, standard rigidity indicators of JSL and EPL were used to quantitatively measure the flexibility of Iran's labour law. Third, analytical survey approach was used to evaluate the performance of labour law. The significance of differences were tested by squared x and SPSS. Research findings demonstrate that the rigidity and inflexibility of the current law (ratified in 1980) is much higher than those of the previous law (ratified in 1958) and those of other target countries. Findings of the survey performed among workers and employers prove the failure of law inregulating labour relations and creating satisfaction.It is concluded that the labour law should be amended to make it more flexible and to promote labour relations. Given the fact that any amendment requires a change of attitude towards labour relations and the interests of workers and employers, partnership relation model (PRM) is recommended for labour relations in Iran.

In economic analyses, the unemployment rate is a major variable in evaluating and determining policies of the labor market. But because this rate is not a true reflection of the labor market, the International Labor Organization (ILO) has proposed the concept of decent work.Decent work involves having an occupation, but also benefiting from the principles such as rights of work, social security and social dialogue. In other words simply having a job is not enough. There are numerous other factors which need to exist in order to have decency of work. These factors include having the right to establish civic societies in regards to work, prohibiting discrimination in employment, respecting the minimum age for work, prohibiting child labor, receiving the required minimum wage for subsistence living, benefiting from social security, having unemployment insurance, empowering the disabled as well as women through their access to suitable job opportunities and the existence of social dialogue among workers, employers and the government. This paper explains not only the major components of decent work, but also looksat Iran’s labor market, to see which of the required elements are missing. It also tries to compare the two based on those indicators which can be calculated through the available information. In conclusion, the paper finds that there is a big difference between Iran’s labor market and what has been defined as decent work. It also suggests providing a national comprehensive plan for decent work in the country.

In an oil exporting country, the negative effects of international oil price variations extend to monetary policy, prices, exchange rate and other macroeconomic indicators. Drastic changes in international oil prices can affect monetary aggregates, directly through volatility in external inflows, and indirectly through changes in fiscal responses to the shock. The monetary impact can in turn lead to price and exchange rate variations as well as inflation. To reduce the macroeconomic instability arising from the volatility of oil income and induce the government to save part of oil revenues for future generations, oil funds have become increasingly popular in oil exporting countries.Oil funds could help mitigate the transfer of oil price shocks to monetary policy and eventually to prices and the exchange rate. When some of the sterilization in response to an oil price hike is conducted on the fiscal side through oil funds, there is a lesser burden on monetary policy. When the exchange rate is the nominal anchor and the policy burden lies with the fiscal authorities, building up or drawing down stocks of the oil fund can be particularly effective in achieving macroeconomic stability. This research argues that oil funds can bring much benefit to oil exporting countries? It also tests the contribution made by oil funds to reduce macroeconomic instability. The econometric estimates resulting from a 26-year panel data set of 13 countries with oil funds suggest that establishing oil funds are correlated with reduced variations of prices and lower inflation as macroeconomic instability index.

Securing the interests of the present and the future generations in nonrenewable hydrocarbon reserves are of prime significance in Iranian oil and gas policy formulations. Despite the massive volume of the initial oil in place (IOIP), the rate of natural depletion is rather low due to the specific properties of Iranian oil reservoirs. This implies the vital importance of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) programs. Moreover, the Iranian giant and super-giants oil fields have now reached their second-half of their long life production profile, which adds further importance to the EOR considerations. According the available research work done in this regard, the adequate gas injection at the right time to appropriate oil fields is the most effective way of achieving secondary recovery in most Iranian oil fields. It is argued in this paper that optimum policy designs to exploit Iranian oil and gas reserves would not be possible without proper dynamic modeling of oil production profile. An estimate of the volume of natural gas needed for injection can be considered as an appropriate criterion for the optimum allocation of natural gas for different sectors including gas exports through pipelines and/or LNG. The compilation of demand and supply trends for natural gas during the Iranian 20-year vision along with an estimate of future price variations in crude oil, natural gas and the renewables are the key variables in policy optimization in the utilization of Iranian hydrocarbon reserves.

OPEC was established in 1960 with the prime objective of enhancing cooperation in international oil market aimed at securing the interests of both producers and consumers. The utilization of massive oil reserves and the excess production capacity in member countries were considered as the main instruments towards the realization of these objectives. Until recently, achieving the said objectives was basically possible due to the prevailing market structure as well as the viability of using excess capacities or production quotas to increase or decrease the supply of crude oil to stabilize the price. In this regard, the historical performance of OPEC signifies the success of this organization in managing the market during certain periods. However, the developments in the global oil market towards the greater role of market forces in crude oil price determination and rapid expansion of petroleum exchanges, together with the considerable decrease in OPEC's excess production capacity have seriously weakened the efficacy of OPEC's traditional policy instruments for market management. This article shows that the time is ripe for OPEC as the organization of major oil exporting countries to revise its long-term strategy by adapting to the new market conditions as well as technical constraints regarding OPEC’s major oil reservoirs. Hence, instead of focusing on theachievement of a balanced equilibrium between price and market share, OPEC should embark on the task of formulating its long-term strategy on the basis of economic and technical cooperation with non-OPEC countries with particular attention to policies of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and the future trends in crude oil price due to the scarcity of hydrocarbon reserves.

Income gap has led to a new social class division during the accelerated process of implementing development plans or followed by the adoption of welfare policies, especially in countries having vast energy resources. The unbalanced formation of high, middle and lower classes is among the signs of this trend in countries in transition. Iran is a clear example of this phenomenon. This article studies the implications of economic growth-the inevitable emergence of new social classes-from a security point of view. The emergence of middle class has brought about many developments in various social, political and cultural institutions. This social class pursues its own demands and needs leading to special forms of resistance against the established power. It seeks changes in power distribution and equal political and social opportunities. The emergence of the lower class is another consequence of economic growth or income redistribution policies. This class also expresses some forms of resistance and change-seeking resulting from their dissatisfaction with their conditions (poverty, discrimination and unmet needs). The article studies the theories of social change and also views on security studies, especially social security. Findings show that many change seekers belong to the lower class and also the middle class expresses resistance and dissatisfaction in the society. The article studies social unrests in Iran during the last two decades by a combination of library methods and social survey. It seems that solving security problems requires paying more attention to the long-term security implications of development plans. Taking the wealth distribution and redistribution policies into account and imposing structural constraints to integrate created classes could reduce to some extent the security implications of this trend.

Bread is an important source of calorie intake for urban and rural households. The government allocates very high subsidies for bread consumption annually. This has kept low the share of bread expenditures in household basket. On the other hand, the continuation of this trend is not possible, due to the budget limitation of government, and the inefficiency of bread production, distribution and consumption system. The government has placed the reform of subsidy system on its agenda. The important point is the measurement of subsidy elimination impact on household expenditure, which constitutes the subjext matter of this article. The methodology of this research is Social Accounts Matrix (SAM). So, its main results show that the elimination of bread and energy carriers subsidies will lead to a 33 percent increase in urban household expenditure and 40 percent in rural household expenditure.

Economy is related to natural resources and environment in the various dimensions of production and consumption. Population growth along with economic development are responsible for the low quality of resources as well as the high level of pollutants which are unbearable for natural environment. In the early 1990s, some attempts made for the extension of national accounts system to cover environmental degradation and income inequality which led to the introduction of the new concept of "green national product". By taking environmental degredation and natural resources depreciation into account, the criterion of green GNP, instead of GNP, can be obtained. Although free trade is often considered a positive and effective factor in economic development and higher level of welfare, increasing trade without taking environmental considerations into account and merely motivated by getting access to other markets, in some countries, has led to the extensive and improper use of resources and energy which results in pollution and emission of greenhouse gases. The study of the impact of free economy on environmental degradation during the period 1974-1996 shows that there is a positive correlation between the emission of dioxide carbon gas and environmental degradation.

The development of infrastructures is considered one of the important requirements of economic growth and higher level of public welfare. Transport infrastructures, especially road transport network plays an important role in this regard. Transport infrastructures, in addition to the improvement of economic and social indices in transport sector, are effective in the prosperity of other economic sectors. Furthurmore, appropriate transport system, while allowing for using the potentials of international transit, provides invaluable opportunities for playing an active role in the international equations. Also, the effective role of appropriate transport infrastructures is considerable in strengthening non-active defence and managing different crises. The limitation of public funds and the low efticiency of the public sector in implementing projects, have directed the attention of different countries to the capacities of the private sector. Along these lines, creating incentives for non-public sector and reducing its risks and removing its concerns are of great importance. One of the most important infrastructures of road transport is freeway which constitutes the subject matter of this article. In this article the different aspects of publicprivate partnership for developing freeways with an emplasis on giving necessary guarantees to the private sector are discussed. Preferring buildown- operate (BOO) contracts over build-operate-transfer ones, guaranteeing capital return with appropriate profit over a determined period, partnership of the public sector with a fixed share without expecting profit during the contract period, government's non interference in pricing, using all investment potentials, paying attention to the economic justification of the freeway (constructed or under the construction) in developing parallel roads, etc are among recommendations provided by this article to create more incentives for the private sector to invest in this field and also to help the government to reach its developmental and social role.

This article studies the effects of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Iran and Turkey on the expansion of non-oil export and import of capital and intermediate goods to Iran. For this purpose, the SMART model is employed to determine the trade creation and diversion effects of the agreement. The results demonstrate that the volume of trade and export of Iran would increase after the elimination of tariff barriers between Iran and Turkey. Although, due to the increase of imports over export the trade balance of the country becomes negative, but the large part of the increase relates to the import of capital and intermediate goods.

Political fragmentation as a main governance problem facing metropolitan regions-existence of various organizations and territories in metropolitan regions without any coordinating framework among themneed to be treated with strategies known as "regionalism" in metropolitan government literature. All strategies of metropolitan regionalism seek to create coordination and cooperation among different independent planning and management organizations and territories in metropolitan regions. This article addresses the application of the strategies of metropolitan regionalism in Tehran metropolitan region aiming at reducing fragmentation impact. It avoids proposing any distinct "metropolitan government model" because of executive constraints in respect of legal and organizational matters in Iran. Instead it proposes a coherent complex of strategies in incrementally mode for ensuring its success.

This article aims at introducing a modern construction technology and the utilization of LSF system in constructions in Tehran. The main hypothesis is that this system is justified enough from technical, industrial, economic, and cultural aspects to be used in housing construction in Tehran. For this applied study, the data related to climatic, geographical and seismic conditions of Tehran were gathered through library research and analysed by a descriptive approach. Then LSF system is investigated in an analytical approach from two perspectives of structure and architectural constituents with three indices of quality, economy and rapidity. The study concludes that although LSF system ranks B in the table and gains 75-80 scores out of 100 compared to other 11 famous construction systems, this system is not technically justifiable and permissible in Tehran. Eventually, given the rejection of the hypothesis, which was evaluated by a meta-analysis approach, the reliability and validity of the study were tested by a quantitative analysis as well as the Delphi method with Torsten criterion.