Journal of Economic Research and Policies
Year:2017 | Volume:24 | Issue:80|Papers Count:12

The main purpose of this paper is to determine the monopoly power of Iran's banking sector pre and post banking sanctions based on Conjectural Variation approach. In this study, for assessing the market power, generalized model of Azzam and Lopez (2002) is used which is based on the New Empirical Industrial Organization. Using panel data and two-stage least squares method, Supply and demand equations are examined. In order to estimate the selected model, macroeconomic variables and balance sheet data of 33 banks have been applied for 1380 to 1393 periods. The results suggest that the extent of market power has dropped from 0.05 to 0.02 by imposing the sanctions. Also, cooperative behavior among banks has been decreased. The results of analysis indicate the price elasticity of loan demand was 0.81 before sanctions and reduced to 0.16 after sanctions because of efficiency reduction of financial markets that shows the sanctions lead to loan demand became more inelastic. Also after the sanctions, the absolute value of cost efficiency of Iranian banking systems reduced.

In this paper, the dispersion of vulnerable households is determined in different geographical areas. For this purpose, we used the Proxy Means Test strategy, based on an assessment of individual households in the population. Using the Household Expenditure and Income Survey data, first, a regression model is designed with independent variables, which correlated with households’ income. Then the estimation of expected income is obtained for each household in the sample. This model is used for estimating the expected income for all settled households hand groups of households whose information was gathered in 2011 Population and Housing Census database. The results that are used for classifying all rural and urban areas across the country show that the Sistan and Baluchestan and Tehran provinces have the highest and lowest percentages of households in the first two deciles of expected income respectively. Also, Tehran and Bashagard cities respectively have the highest and lowest percentages of the households that belong to the first two deciles of expected income.

Different detrending methods make possible to evaluate cyclical features of economic time series from different perspectives. In this way, it can be assessed whether different approaches to extract cycles, can provide useful information in order to better understanding behaviors of economic variables in business cycles. In this paper, we investigate Iran economic cyclical features through using different detrending methods and provide comparisons of their results. The results show that considering the unit root process for the trend of GDP and its components when decomposing into trend and cycle, can notably influences on the relationship between the cyclical components of important macroeconomic variables. This matter is also applicable in recognition of expansion and contraction, volatility and co-movements of variables. Findings indicate that direction of cyclical component movement of consumption, investment, and real wage, as well as the timing of investment and import, depends on whether the trend is considered DSP or not. Besides, the results demonstrate that price level is counter cyclical and import, and export are procyclical. In respect of timing, export is lagging and in most of the results, import is leading and price level is lagging.

This paper investigates the effect of deposit rate and loan interest rate shocks as credit shocks on real sector variables and on the optimal investment decisions for household in various assets such as stocks, gold, foreign currency, deposit and real estate. For this purpose, a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model is used that including New Keynesian economics with financial and banking sector and the model is applied to Iran's economy. Based on the log-linearized form of equations of the designed model, the level of household investment in each of physical and financial assets depends on current asset price negatively and depends on asset price expectation positively. In fact, an investor sales his assets when the current prices increase and keep assets in his portfolio if there is a clear prospect of increasing trend of asset's prices in the future. On the other hand, calibration, simulation and impulse responses functions analysis show that the deposit interest rate positive shock has a negative impact on household investment demand in physical and financial assets. This shock has a positive effect on marginal cost and negative effects on capital stock, investment, output, inflation and consumption from financing cost channel. Based on the results, for stabilization in physical and financial asset markets, forming the positive expectations in the future of assets' price is required. Although an increase in the deposit interest rate is an important tool for monetary and financial policy, and it is a fundamentally necessity in inflationary states, but its negative outcomes should be considered.

Generally, housing as a complex entity, multi-layer and multi-value goods, have a relative sustainable notability in society. Housing supply in public projects framework is an acceptable strategy. The Mehr housing project in Iran matches with this approach and has planned especially for supplying affordable housing for low-income groups. This research has been targeted evaluation on eight cities-projects of the Mehr housing plan in Tehran province Urban Areas that have fewer than 500, 000 populations. Our method is quantitative; statement of research is descriptive and analytical by using the technique of data envelopment analysis. Model of the study is BCC- input oriented with variable returns to scale. Input variables of the model are land as a physical resource, financial resource and the only output of the model is housing Floor Area. Among the four groups of Mehr housing plan, self-ownership projects are selected as sample data of the study. Running of the final model is done by MaxDEA software. According to the results, average of technical efficiency (TE) index in mentioned cities is 0.92. Meanwhile, Malard self-ownership housing projects have the lowest (TE) score, equal to 0.6. Results indicated that possibility of economic saving in self-ownership public housing plans. This saving can be 8 hectares of land as a main input of housing production and amount over 457 billion Riyal of banking housing loan, which allocated to this national plan of housing affordability for low-income groups in Tehran Province. Moreover, it is recommended for using of interdisciplinary approaches and new qualitative indexes in the evaluation system of public housing projects.

One of the most important problems facing the government in Iran is insufficient government tax income and low share of this income in the government budget. Furthermore, according to the available evidence, this phenomenon is growing; so investigating effects of business climate indicators as one of the most important factors in the tax system is essential. Accordingly, with using PLS, and panel data in XLSTAT and Eviews software, the most important influential factors on direct and indirect taxes among the 30 business climate indicators are reviewed. Based on PLS method, between 30 reviewed indicators, five indexes of the multiplicity of taxes, assets transaction cost, the overall rate of taxes, import duties and charges have the highest contribution in the collection of direct and indirect taxes. Then, in separated panels, effects of selected indicators on the collection of direct and indirect taxes are estimated in the different provinces. Results of the panel data estimation on indirect taxes reflect the fact that, the variables of overall rate of taxes (74 hundredths), the cost of imports (22 hundredths), transaction costs of assets (0.5 hundredths); multiplicity of taxes (5 hundredths) and time to pay taxes (0.5 hundredths) have larger impacts on the collection of indirect taxes. In the case of direct taxes, the overall rate of taxes and duties (30 hundredths), cost per transaction per asset (11 hundredths); the multiplicity of taxes (1.5 hundredths) and the cost of imports (one hundredth) have greater impacts. According to these results, the overall tax rate and duties are the most important factor influencing on the collection of direct and indirect taxes. Price variables, in other words, affect the collection of direct and indirect taxes in the country more than actual variables, which is because of low size of supply of services and products and a high share of the non-official economy of the national economy.

Investigating the convergence hypothesis among the Iran’s provinces and employing economic policies in order to achieve regional balance is one of the most important macroeconomic issues in Iran. In this study, the hypothesis of per capita income convergence has been investigated in Iran’s provinces with using different methods such as unit root tests, convergence club, Tile -statistic and cluster analysis. The result of unit root tests shows that the absolute and conditional convergences between the provinces of Iran are not confirmed. Furthermore, the results of club convergence and Tile- statistic do not confirm per capita income convergence. Also, Cluster analysis suggests non-convergence among the provinces of Iran. In general, the results of all methods indicate a strong divergence in terms of per capita income among Iran's provinces. Divergence in per capita may represent more unbalanced development in the near future. In fact, the results of the paper show different rates of economic growth among Iran’s provinces.

In this paper, authors will compare the small open economy model with incomplete and complete asset markets and their steady states that depend on initial conditions and equilibrium dynamics. In the literature, to induce stationarity in these models, some changes have been proposed for the standard model. This paper presents a quantitative comparison of these alternative approaches for stationarity of these models. Here, three different specifications model, which lead to stationarity in the model, are considered: (1) A model with a debt-elastic interest rate premium; (2) A model with convex portfolio adjustment costs; (3) A model with complete asset markets. The main finding of the paper is that all the models create almost same dynamics in business-cycle frequencies, as measured by unconditional second moments and impulse response functions. The only noticeable difference between the alternative specifications is that the complete-asset-market model induces smoother consumption dynamics. Also, altering the parameters which led to stationarity, within a wide range around the baseline initial value does not affect significantly on the predictions of the dynamics of the model.

Development banks, which play a vital role in the economic development of countries, are the transmission agents of the government's economic policy to their sectors and distribute financial sources to economics sectors with efficient planning, whereas they can outmaneuver the success of other banks. This article wants to identify and explain the factors (criteria, sub-criteria) affecting the success of development banks in Iran and then ranking them. Furthermore, it addresses to some challenges which development banks facing with them. This ranking is done with Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) that is included in multi-criteria decision-making. First by using the studies and the library resources the primarily model is designed, and then the ultimate model is extracted from interviews with university professors and experts in banking. In the study, criteria, and sub-criteria that affect the success of development banks were identified and then these criteria are ranked in order of their importance. The most important challenges facing development banks also have been introduced.

One of the investment opportunities in Iran is real states, which always absorb a massive capital flow. In this study, in addition to investigating the performance of real estate market versus other investment opportunities; the effect of real states in the investors’ portfolio has been studied over a period between 1992-2013. We have considered exchange rate (dollar), Gold, stock and securities as other investment opportunities. To evaluate the effect of real estate market on investors’ portfolio, mean-variance methods have been used. In this way, efficiency frontier has drawn in two states, with and without real estate market. Results of the paper indicate that presence of real state market in the portfolios shifts the efficiency frontier up, and leads to less risk and more return on optimal portfolios. Moreover, the paper clearly indicates the weight of real states in the lower level of risk is low and weight of real states in higher level of risk is high.