Journal of Economic Research and Policies
Year:2015 | Volume:23 | Issue:73|Papers Count:10

The main objective of this research is to assess the degree of competition in the selected banks as representatives of Iran's banking system over the period of 2007 to 2011. Also the welfare loss due to market power of banks is calculated using Harberger triangle. The results show that market power of banking system in Iran in 2007 had the net social cost equivalent to 0.84 percent of gross domestic product of Iran. This cost has reached its peak in 2009 and has got a downward trend over the following years. In 2011 it has reached to 0.97% of gross domestic product of Iran.

Supervisory institutes have paid a great attention to the use of margin as a control tool of excessive speculation in futures contracts. This paper studied effects of margin changes on the futures prices, trading volume and price volatility in Iran Mercantile Exchange (IME) using gold coin futures contracts data from November 2008 to December 2014. We estimated a bivariate GARCH-M model to take account of the inter-relationships. According to our research and based on information of futures contracts market of Bahar-e-Azadi gold coin in IME, we concluded that any increase in margin leads to price decrease. Our estimated model showed that any increase of margin resulted to the more volatility of futures prices. Also, more amount of margin leads to reduction of trading volume.

An increase in firm’s export enhances its productivity via several channels such as competition, technology transfer and economies of scale exploitation. The main purpose of this paper is to examine learning by export hypothesis, in which a firm’s export affects its productivity positively. The effect of Iranian manufacturing industries’ export on their total factor productivity has been tested employing new international trade theories, using Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and the latest micro data during 2001-2010. The results show a positive and significant effect of export on total factor productivity of Iranian manufacturing industries. Based on this result, it seems that industrial firm’s export increases their productivity.

Tax on value added is a kind of indirect tax which yields high income for governments. Thus, governments intend to increase it. However, raising tax rate uniformly across all goods consumed by different income groups have been criticized for being regressive and unjust. In this paper, we have used two different tax rates to distinguish luxury goods from other essential goods. Taking Justice and equity into account while levying taxes, this study shows that optimum tax rates on essential goods such as food and non-essential luxury goods are estimated to be 8 percent and 26 percent respectively. This finding, however, does not mean that tax authority should change the tax structure immediately disregarding its impacts, and tension it may create, but rather it proposes a gradual and planned system of taxes, taking precautionary measures.

Various economic studies have shown that Minimum Efficient Scale (MES) varies in different industries and therefore economic firms enter in industries with different sizes. Nevertheless, firms attempt to reach the MES of the industry in a reasonable time to survive in an industry. From different point of view, the reasonable time can be evaluated with speed of adjustment. In fact, there is a significant relationship between the time and the speed of adjustment. Accordingly, this paper attempts to determine the speed of firm size adjustment in Iranian manufacturing industries at 4-digit ISIC code industry levels. Investigating the effect of various factors on the speed of adjustment is another goal of this paper. In this study, Comanor-Wilson method based on employment criteria is used for the estimation of MES. Using cross-sectional regression technique over three years, the coefficients of industry structure, technology levels and distance to MES at the time of entry is estimated on geometric mean of l. The results of this study show that in contrast to the expectation, firms that are far away from MES adjust themselves with slower speed. From policy point of view, the finding points to inability of Iranian manufacturing industries’ firms in achieving an appropriate speed of adjustment at the time of entry. Therefore, supportive policies are necessary for survival of new entrance firms during infancy.

Nowadays most countries, especially developing countries such as Iran, have to adopt export promotion policy in order to achieve economic growth and development. According to exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) models, investigating the effect of exchange rate changes on export prices is important issue for these countries. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to estimate exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) into export prices in Iran and its top trade partners over 2000-2010 applying Arellano-Bond GMM approach. Results show that ERPT for the mentioned countries is incomplete and close to one. Therefore it can be said that a large part of exchange rate changes are passed into export prices. The results also show that GDP has a significantly negative effect on of ERPD. It means that low income leads to high effect of exchange rate on export prices. According to the results, it also can be seen that inflation rate has a positive and significant effect on ERPT. According to the results, it is recommended that adopting appropriate policies, policymakers restrain exchange rate fluctuations and thereby minimize the instability of export prices. It is also suggested that in order to reduce ERPT to export prices and thus export price stability, some policies to be applied so that to control inflation and reduce domestic prices.

In this essay we are analyzing dynamics of inflation and inflation uncertainty in Iran during 1988:3-2012: 3using Markov Regime Switching Heteroscedasticity model (MRSH). This model allows us to measure regime changes in the mean and variance of inflation and closely study inflation and inflation uncertainty in short and long runs. Findings show that there is a positive relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty in the long run while in the short run the relationship is negative. Therefore, Friedman-Ball hypothesis which supports positive effect of inflation on inflation uncertainty can only be justified in limited scale in the long run.

This study examines the linearity of money demand function and monitors money demand reaction with respect to different levels of inflation. The linkage between money demand and inflation is not always straightforward: some research report is positive but it is revealed negative in some other papers. It has been argued by economists that such conflicting results has roots in the differences associated with the structures of economic agent’s expectations. Therefore, this paper tries to shed more light on this problem as well as monitoring the behavior of Iran's money demand function encountering to different levels of inflation on one hand and computing threshold level of inflation on the other hand using annual data from 1973-2011. For this purpose, four money demand functions are developed in terms of Keynesian school and Friedman theory of money demand with nonlinear specifications, which are estimated using smooth transition (STR) system. First, stationarity of time series has been examined with unit root tests and then existence of a long-run co-movement among the variables have been verified by Johansen co integration procedure. Furthermore, in order to distinct long-run from short-run dynamics, a vector error correction (VECM) procedure has been adopted. Findings are in favor of existence of a nonlinear money demand function in Iran and a well-adjustment of logistic smooth transition function (LSTR) in this case. Results show that threshold level of inflation is about 14.75%, indicating that the money demand function reacts negatively facing any higher level of the estimated threshold level of inflation, but positively in lower rates.

Identification of the impact mechanisms of institutional factors to explain income differences among countries indicates the importance of institutional economics. Following the methodology proposed by Coe et al (2009), and using Panel data Two-Stage Least Square (Panel TSLS), this study tries to interpret the interaction between institutional factors and indices (such as governance and indicators for doing business) and standard economic variables and its impact on the growth of per capita income across 12 countries in Asia and Middle East during the period spanning from 1996-2012. The dependent variable in this model is the logarithm of real income per capita, which is modeled as a function of the various interactions among institutional indices, R&D expenditures, net FDI flow, the degree of openness of the economy, and some other standard variables such as human capital and investment in physical and natural resources. Econometric findings indicate that the general quality of institutions will affect the income per capita growth through indirect channels which are R&D, FDI and Openness. Therefore, institutionalization of market mechanism, trade liberalization, and reduction in uncertainty and political risk will all have statistically significant effect on the growth of income in those countries.