فصلنامه پژوهش های اقتصادی ایران
پیاپی 59 (تابستان 1393)

The financial crisis of 2007 showed that the impact of financial markets on macroeconomic developments is deep. The labor market was affected by financial variables. In this paper، the impact of financial shocks on labor market fluctuations with financial frictions in the the Iranian economy is investigated. Labor market reaches equilibrium via a search and matching process. A model of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) is designed for the Iranian economy and its parameters are estimated using Bayesian methods. The results show that a negative financial shock increases unemployment. In addition، financial frictions play an important role in amplifying the effects of financial shocks on unemployment.

In this study the market structure of industrial sector has been evaluated based on the index of economies of scale, Herfindahl – Hirschman concentration index, and Lerner concentration index. Also, the relationship among profitability index and indexes of concentration ratio and economies of scale has been examined. Data used include the information of input and output of the components of cost function, market share of industries, number of firms, and the output price related to 23 industries of ISIC 2-digit code for the period 1996-2009. The result of evaluation of concentration ratio based on the Lerner and Herfindahl indexes indicates that the concentration level has declined during the period under study, while the industry sector has been away from competitive situation. In addition, the elasticity of cost with respect to output is less than unit for all of the industries implying the existence of economies of scale for 23 industries. The most important finding of this study is that the profitability index of industry sector is less than 50% and equal to 38% and the Lerner index and economies of scale are able to explain 52% of variations in profitability index of whole industry. Also, the Lerner index has relative superiority in the explanation of profitability index compared with Herfindahl – Hirschman concentration index.

Average females’ age in the first marriage was increasing in Iran over the last two decades from 20.9 in 1991 to 22.7 in 2010. It is well accepted that labor market prospects and the males’ wage structure are the main determinants of preference toward marriage among others. Making use of a province-wide panel data and micro individualized data (Household income and expenditure survey) for provinces, this research aims to examine the role of males’ wage inequality in the marriage rate across provinces and the probit cross-section models of preferences toward marriage in Iran. In the framework of search and match theory of marriage our findings reveal that wage inequality and gender ratio have negative impact on the marriage decision, but males’ wage over females has positive and significant effect on the marriage rate and marriage decision. These results are rather robust across the several cross-section probit models.

Price change is the most important element in explaining the change of consumer welfare. Increase in prices decrease real revenue of consumers and by effect on consumer’s purchasing power, influence their poverty and welfare. Thing that helps governments in suitable policy-making for reducing poverty and protection of consumer welfare, is awareness from welfare loss resulting from changing in prices. In this paper, amount of welfare loss after increase in prices for various income deciles of urban households of Isfahan, is computed. For this, linear expenditure system by seemingly unrelated regression method is estimated by using data of income and expenditure of urban households during 2004-2011. And then amount of supernumerary expenditures, marginal propensity to consume out of supernumerary expenditures and the mental poverty line are computed. Compensation variations and equivalent variations in each of eight groups of commodity and service and also in each of ten income deciles are computed. Results show that increase in prices of foods, dwelling, transportation, miscellaneous commodity, health and treatment, clothes and shoes, furnitures, entertainments and education respestively lead to most welfare loss.

Economic development in Islamic countries, emergence of new needs for financial resources and economic development, relative achievement in Islamic investment market, and the necessity of preventing riba have compelled Muslim scholars to design new Islamic financial instruments. Capabilities of Islamic contracts and the accumulation of experience in financial markets have made designing and administrating new Islamic financial instruments possible. Besides the necessity of designing new Islamic financial instruments and specialized jurisprudential investigation on sukuk to answer the increasing number of questions and meet the needs of investors, another issue should be also addressed, which is that of risk management. It must be considered in designing new Islamic financial instruments. The role of risk in this new financial instrument should not be overlooked. That is, all the risks of the bonds should be identified and ranked. This paper is an attempt in ranking morabeheh sukuk risks using simple additive weighting (SAW) method and the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS).Using library resources, it was made possible to describe this instrument. Based on the risk rankings, inflation risk is the most important one among all primary and secondary market risks. Other risks, such as political, interest rates, and market risks as well as currency rate fluctuations are considered secondary. In other words, the risks of secondary market are more important, compared with those of the primary market. This paper investigated the validity of two hypotheses: (1) It is possible to rank the risks of morabehe sukuk, and (2) that bonds with fixed returns, such as murabaha are less risky, compared to the bonds with expected returns.

In this paper we formulate the volatility of the Metal Index, by an ARJI-GARCH model, with reference to the effect of the volatility of dollar exchange rate. We express the jump in the dollar exchange rate by an Autoregressive Conditional Jump Intensity (ARJI) model, and then use the output to model the volatility of Tehran Base Metal Index by GARCH. To test the model, we calculate VaR using the ARJI-GARCH volatility, and the GARCH volatilities without considering the dollar exchange rate volatility or the jump in it. We calculate the referred VaR also by an exponentially time weighted historical simulation method. We test the accuracy and preciseness of the resulted VaRs by the associated statistical tests, and conclude that the ARJI-GARCH model is well suited for forecasting volatility in this context

The real exchange rate is considered as a basic indicator in determining the level of international competition that explain the internal situation of the country. Instability in the performance of this Index implies imbalance in the economy. Instability of the real exchange rate will effect total demand of the economy by import and export and will influence overall economy through costs of intermediate and final imported goods. It’s the cause of changes and fluctuations in consumer and wholesale price indices that are calculated as the basis of inflation. The present study investigates the instability of the exchange rate on the private sector's consumption using annual data for the period 1352-1390. In this regard, values ​​of the real exchange rate volatility using the pattern of generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH), and then the impact of the real exchange rate instability on private sector consumption is surveyed by using the method of Autoregressive-Distributed Lag (ARDL). The results of estimations show that in long term, Disposable income, liquidity, real exchange rate and the volatility of the real exchange rate have positive effect and Real interest rates have a negative impact on private sector consumption.