In this study, a model of Bayesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) from Real Business Cycles (RBC) approach with the aim of identifying the factors shaping price bubbles of Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) was specified. The above-mentioned model was conducted in two scenarios. In the first scenario, the baseline model with sentiment shock was examined. In this model, stock price bubbles appear endogenously in a positive feedback mechanism that is supported by people optimism. In the second scenario, only sentiment shock is absent from the model. According to the results obtained from the estimation of marginal likelihood model based on Laplace approximation, the baseline model is more in accord with Iran’s economic structure and real data. Consequently, the sentiment shock had a dominant role in creating stock price fluctuations and macroeconomic variables. Based on the results of variance decomposition model, sentiment shock was also recognized as the most important source of fluctuations in bubbles and subsequent fluctuations in stock prices. This shock reflected households’ beliefs about the approximate size of previous bubbles over the recent ones and was passed to the macroeconomic by credit constraints. In this way, this shock also described a major part of the fluctuation of consumption and output. Sentiment shock explained about 86% of stock price fluctuations, 47% of consumption fluctuations, and 39% of output fluctuations.

Banking system is considered as one of the most important economic sectors of every country. Because of the dependency between the performances of different sectors in economy, instability in banking sector will lead to disorder in all the other economic sectors. Marketization can influence banking stability. The primary objective of the present study is to investigate the relationship between marketization and banking stability in Iran. This study investigates the effect of institutional quality on the relationship between marketization and banking stability. Accordingly, the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and Panel Threshold Regression (PTR) techniques were used to estimate the models. The results of GMM indicated a decrease in banking stability after marketization. An improvement in institutional quality, however, could improve the relationship between marketization and banking stability. The results obtained by the PTR analysis revealed that institutional quality had a threshold value which could affect the relationship between marketization and banking stability and led to different relationships between marketization and banking stability under different regimes

Health tourism is a profitable and competitive industry, which includes both medical and wellness tourism. This research intends to identify and analyze the determinants of medical tourism expansion in Iran. To this end, first, 384 questionnaires were distributed among medical tourists visiting selected private hospitals in Tehran, and medical tourism experts in both private and public sectors in 2017. The data obtained from the questionnaires were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The price level had the greatest impact on attracting the medical tourists in 2017. The service and therapeutic capacities, and the characteristics of the destination ranked second and third, respectively. Marketing and public sector policy-making had positive but relatively small effects on attracting medical tourists to Iran. To compete with rival countries in attracting medical tourists, surgical operations should be presented efficiently. Private hospitals have to maintain their equipment and technology at the same level as those in the advanced countries. Furthermore, public and private sectors should spend more on advertising and marketing. Finally, in attracting more medical tourists, the role of public policy should be considered seriously.

Nowadays, banks are considered as one of the major components of the financial system of a country and any deficits and malfunction in the banking system will negatively affect the performance of the real sector. Therefore, there is a need for more investigation on the behavior of banks and factors affecting those behaviors in a country. One of the issues that affect the behavior of banks is symmetric information. Thus, the main aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of asymmetric information in the money markets on investment, production, and employment. Hence, based on the New-Keynesian framework, a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model was adopted in accordance with the structure of the economy of Iran. The designed model entailed nine sectors including households, firms, banks, the Central Bank, oil, the government, exports, imports, and other countries of the world. Moreover, the rigidities of the prices and wages, and the rigidities of the imported and exported goods were taken into account in the model. By using the Bayesian method and data gathered from Iran during 1974-2017, the parameters of equations were estimated and the impact of symmetric information was investigated. The results indicated that increasing the asymmetric information and reducing the honesty in the society through decreasing the resources available to the banks and increasing the cost of banks will lead to an increase in the profit of the facilities. Also, increasing the profit of banks concessional loans decreases investment, production, and employment.

Oil and Gas sector, with notable participation in national product and funding public expenditures, plays a seminal role in Iran's economy. Although there is a relative lag in providing proportionate supply, Iran stands at the highest rank of owning world's related proven reserves. Using a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, this study was aimed to investigate the effects of the increase in the acquisition rate of Iran's oil and gas upstream affairs from oil revenues on GNP and public budget, which are supposed to help the government keep its main obligations often funded from oil revenues. By applying the 18% gain, instead of the current 14.5%, to the oil and gas upstream affairs, short-run recession against long-run booming effects would emerge. Accordingly, maintaining the initial level of either the Public Goods and Services (PGS) output or Government Financial Supports on PGS, GNP could boost up to 5% with over 15% of required contraction in the public budget. On the contrary, maintaining the initial level of either the Transfer Payments or Transfer Payments and Financial Supports on PGS (simultaneously), GNP would rise only 1%, due to the negligible required contraction in the public budget. Therefore, allocating more oil revenues to developing upstream affairs (even under the presence of the contemporary main obligations) is recommended due to its potential to spur notable growth in GNP.

This paper was aimed to investigate the mixed empirical results on the effect of health insurance in reducing the risk of catastrophic health expenditure (CHE). We investigated a wide range of factors affecting the risk of CHE among patients admitted to hospitals in Tehran. We categorized hospitals into five groups from private hospitals to charity ones. The data used herein was extracted from the second round of Urban Health Equity Assessment and Response Tool. Determinants of CHE were identified using logistic regression. We found that the significant effect of insurance on aggregate data was solely determined by its effect on reducing the risk of CHE in social security organization hospitals. Insured people by this organization allocate a higher proportion of their salaries to the health insurance and are admitted to the organizational hospitals free of charge. This finding shows the bias inherited in the aggregation and provides support for full pre-payments mechanisms. Our findings suggest that individuals relate CHE to the chosen hospitals, which, in turn, needs to be based on individuals’ health insurance and socio-economic conditions.