Editorial
Research Paper
Marzieh Dindar Rostami; Shamsollah Shirinbakhsh; Zahra Afshari
Abstract
The present study was aimed to investigate the effects of oil price shocks on discretionary fiscal policies in selected OPEC countries during 1980-2015. In this regard, the heterogeneous dynamic reaction to structural shock was examined using Panel Structural Vector Autoregressive (PSVAR) technique. ...
Read More
The present study was aimed to investigate the effects of oil price shocks on discretionary fiscal policies in selected OPEC countries during 1980-2015. In this regard, the heterogeneous dynamic reaction to structural shock was examined using Panel Structural Vector Autoregressive (PSVAR) technique. Based on the findings, the effect of oil price shocks on discretionary fiscal policy was positive in short-run but ineffective in long-run. In addition, the oil price shocks caused an increase in inflation and government expenditure and a decrease in the economic growth in selected OPEC countries according to the Resource Curse phenomenon. Moreover, as variance decomposition showed, the government expenditure and economic growth have the most effect on discretionary policy changes. The effect of discretionary fiscal policy on economic growth in selected OPEC countries was negative, contrary to the Keynesian theory and the results of some other studies. Because discretionary fiscal policies play a major role in decisions of the countries mentioned above, the results also showed that a limitation in the government authority in OPEC countries would come into conflict with the decrease in economic growth and production fluctuation.
Research Paper
Ali Hussein Samadi; Sara Togha
Abstract
Entrepreneurship is influenced by many factors and environments such as institutions. Institutions have an important role to play in the individual's tendency toward necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper was to examine the impact of institutional quality (property rights) ...
Read More
Entrepreneurship is influenced by many factors and environments such as institutions. Institutions have an important role to play in the individual's tendency toward necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper was to examine the impact of institutional quality (property rights) on opportunity and necessity entrepreneurship. The results, based on unbalanced panel data from 2005 to 2015, showed that property rights did not have a significant effect on the opportunity entrepreneurship in the factor-driven group while it had a negative impact on necessity entrepreneurship. In the efficiency-driven group, protecting property rights would provide the perfect context for opportunity entrepreneurship and reduce necessity entrepreneurship, but in the innovation-driven group, strengthening property rights increased both opportunity and necessity entrepreneurship. These results indicate that the impact of property rights on (opportunity- and necessity-) entrepreneurship depends on the level of economic development of countries.
Research Paper
Afsaneh Kazemi Mehrabadi; Vahid Taghinezhad Omran; Mohammad Valipour Khatir; Saeed Rasekhi
Abstract
Forecasting industrial production is essential for efficient planning by managers. Although there are many statistical and mathematical methods for prediction, the use of intelligent algorithms with desirable features has made significant progress in recent years. The current study compared the accuracy ...
Read More
Forecasting industrial production is essential for efficient planning by managers. Although there are many statistical and mathematical methods for prediction, the use of intelligent algorithms with desirable features has made significant progress in recent years. The current study compared the accuracy of the Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Adaptive Nero-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) approaches to assess the current state and predict the future state of industrial production. The seasonal dataset comprised the labor force, capital stock, human capital, trade openness, liquidity and credit financing to the industrial sector as input variables and value added of industrial production as the output variable for the period of 1988 to 2018. The dataset was used to forecast industrial production for Seasons of the year 2019 and 2020. The results showed that, while both are appropriate tools for forecasting industrial production, ANFIS had a lower the Mean Squared Error (MSE) and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) than ANN. The findings of the research indicate that ANFIS is more effective in forecasting industrial production, which can help policymakers in planning and creating an effective strategy for the future.
Research Paper
Hadi Keshavarz; Hojat Parsa
Abstract
This study aimed to examine the effects of monetary policy on macroeconomic variables with regard to the collateral constraint. For this purpose, a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) was developed for Iran’s economic status. Two scenarios were considered as to account for the behavior ...
Read More
This study aimed to examine the effects of monetary policy on macroeconomic variables with regard to the collateral constraint. For this purpose, a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) was developed for Iran’s economic status. Two scenarios were considered as to account for the behavior of the central bank. In the first scenario, the monetary rule is modeled according to the GDP gap and inflation. In the second scenario that is modeled by macro-prudential rule, in addition to the GDP gap and inflation, it is also the central bank responses to the housing price gap that contributes to a steady state. An examination of the impulse response functions in the two scenarios indicated that the monetary shock increased production and inflation. A monetary shock has a positive impact on the consumption of patient households (lenders) and a negative effect on impatient households’ (borrowers) consumption. The collateral constraint was assumed to cause the effects of shocks to be continued on both groups. A comparison between the two scenarios indicated that if the central bank responds to the housing price deviation, in addition to the GDP gap and inflation, the effectiveness of the monetary policy will be strengthened.
Research Paper
Mojtaba Abbasian; Ali Sardar Shahraki; Javad shahraki
Abstract
Energy plays a significant role in today's developing societies. The role of energy demands to make decisions and policy with regard to its production, distribution, and supply. The vital importance of energy, especially fossil fuels, is a factor affecting agricultural production. This factor has a great ...
Read More
Energy plays a significant role in today's developing societies. The role of energy demands to make decisions and policy with regard to its production, distribution, and supply. The vital importance of energy, especially fossil fuels, is a factor affecting agricultural production. This factor has a great influence on the production of agricultural products in Iran. The forecast of the consumption of oil products by the agricultural sector can help managers and planners to adopt sound management practices for their consumption. Presently, artificial neural networks are regarded as a powerful tool for the analysis and modeling of nonlinear relationships. The present study employed GMDH and RBF artificial neural networks to estimate the consumption of oil products by the agricultural sector. The underpinning parameters were selected to include the value added to the fixed price, rural population, agricultural land area, agricultural mechanization (tractor), and the consumption rate of oil products, electricity, price of oil products, and total energy use by the agricultural sector for the period of 1967-2017. The comparison of MSE, MAE, and MAPE for the GMDH and RBF models showed that the GMDH neural network was highly capable of modeling the energy consumption of the agricultural sector.
Research Paper
Ahmed Yakubu; Mohammed Adebayo Ojuolape; Jemeel Sanni
Abstract
Transportation is a necessity if the day-to-day economic activities of the society must move on. There are different modes of informal transport available in Nigeria. This study evaluated the determinants of the modal choice of informal transport among commuters in North central city of Ilorin, Nigeria. ...
Read More
Transportation is a necessity if the day-to-day economic activities of the society must move on. There are different modes of informal transport available in Nigeria. This study evaluated the determinants of the modal choice of informal transport among commuters in North central city of Ilorin, Nigeria. The study used primary data generated through a structured questionnaire administered to 100 commuters randomly selected in Ilorin metropolis. The study used a multinomial logit model for data analysis. The results showed that earnings and household size were the core determinants of the choice of informal transport mode. The study concluded that different informal transport modes available to the commuters gave them the opportunity to make choices based on their income and the transport cost in Ilorin metropolis, Nigeria.
Research Paper
Saeed Rasekhi; Zahra Sheidaei
Abstract
The aim of this article is to study the firm-level pricing behavior based on the firm’s competitive strategy through the exchange rate pass-through. Using Iranian export price microdata, we provide new empirical evidence on how firm’s exchange rate pass-through depends on firm’s strategic ...
Read More
The aim of this article is to study the firm-level pricing behavior based on the firm’s competitive strategy through the exchange rate pass-through. Using Iranian export price microdata, we provide new empirical evidence on how firm’s exchange rate pass-through depends on firm’s strategic decisions of competition. After classifying firms in two groups based on their competitive strategies, we show that firms involving in strategic complements pass more exchange rate movements to export prices than firms with strategic substitutions. Furthermore, firms in strategic substitutions tend to increase their export volume significantly more than the firms in strategic complements as a result of the depreciation of exchange rate.
Research Paper
Behnam Abdi; Seyyed Hamid Khodadad Hosseini
Abstract
An outstanding feature of the contemporary world is the rapid economic, technological, social, and political changes marked by a high level of uncertainty. For surviving in this complex and constantly changing economy, successful transition to a learning economy is a necessity for developing countries. ...
Read More
An outstanding feature of the contemporary world is the rapid economic, technological, social, and political changes marked by a high level of uncertainty. For surviving in this complex and constantly changing economy, successful transition to a learning economy is a necessity for developing countries. This research was aimed to investigate the factors which played a role in the developing countries’ successful transition to a learning economy. Furthermore, according to evolutionary economics, countries are path-dependent, i.e. the differences in structures and institutions of an economy give each economic system its specific nature that is illustrated in the particular challenges each country face in its transformation to a learning economy. Hence, based on the pieces of evidence from Iran, this inductive, exploratory, and qualitative research, using a grounded theory approach and a follow-up quantitative analysis based on survey data, led to the development of a model that can be used to analyze the success factors which contribute to this transition. The findings showed that in terms of the ‘paradigm model’, transitional thinking as casual condition, ICT, social capital and macro-economic conditions as intervening conditions, policy institution as central category, government, university and industry interactions, learning firms, collaborative learning, improved research and education system, and regional development as strategies were factors that could lead to a learning economy.
Research Paper
Marzieh Pirahmadi; Zahra Afshari; Mehdi Sarem
Abstract
In order to facilitate transactions among banks, the interbank market has been established in Iran since 2008. The primary objective of this market is to eliminate banking system liquidity deficiencies at a rate chosen by the Central bank of Iran. The importance of this rate is that it affects market ...
Read More
In order to facilitate transactions among banks, the interbank market has been established in Iran since 2008. The primary objective of this market is to eliminate banking system liquidity deficiencies at a rate chosen by the Central bank of Iran. The importance of this rate is that it affects market interest rates through its effects on banks’ balance sheets. Banks’ balance sheets are also influenced by banking regulation, such as Basel regulations; thus, this study was aimed to investigate the effects of the interbank market in Iran by imposing Basel III regulations on the banking system. For this purpose, a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model (DSGE) was designed that included the interbank market. The structural parameters of the designed model were estimated using the Bayesian method and the quarterly data on the period 2008-2015. Afterward, the effect of a positive interbank innovation on the economy’s dynamics was examined. The results showed that an increase in the interbank rate led to instability in the economy. It was concluded that an increase in the liquidity and capital adequacy requirement, as mentioned in the Basel III regulations, would reduce the negative effects of interbank shocks on macroeconomic variables and the economy would naturally become more stable.
Research Paper
Sayed Yahya Abtahi; Elham Amrollahi Bioki
Abstract
This study was an attempt to analyze the dynamic reaction of the exchange market pressure (EMP) to different states of the foreign exchange market and inflation in the Iranian economy during 1988:4-2017:4. To this end, the EMP index was calculated using Edwards’s (2002) and Kumah’s (2007) ...
Read More
This study was an attempt to analyze the dynamic reaction of the exchange market pressure (EMP) to different states of the foreign exchange market and inflation in the Iranian economy during 1988:4-2017:4. To this end, the EMP index was calculated using Edwards’s (2002) and Kumah’s (2007) formulae. By considering inflation as the threshold variable and using Threshold Vector Autoregressive (TVAR) model, the results showed that lagged variables had no significant effects on EMP in a low inflation regime, but inflation had significant effects on EMP in a high inflation regime. The results of using the Markov Switching Vector Autoregressive (MS-VAR) model showed that in EMP and INF equations, the autoregressive coefficients in all lags and in both regimes were significant; this emphasizes the stability of the estimated VAR model. Based on the results of the MS-VAR equations, the results of the Granger Causality Test showed that when the EMP switched to a high regime, the inflation would have a significant impact on the EMP, but in the regimes where the EMP was at a low level, the inflation was not the cause of the EMP. EMP in low inflation regimes could also affect inflation while EMP was not the cause of inflation in high inflation regimes. Therefore, the policymakers should note that increasing EMP, even in low inflation regimes, can lead to pressure on prices. On the other hand, an increase in the foreign reserves causes the EMP to switch to a high regime; then, the inflationary pressures at any level of the inflation rate can exacerbate the exchange market pressure, and policymakers would be unable to control the currency market. Thus, if the EMP is controlled, the effects of inflation on the EMP will be discontinued, and this is a key point for policymakers.
other
