Iranian Journal of Economic Studies
Volume:5 Issue: 1, Spring 2016

This paper elaborates on the government's powers - both at the domestic level and over foreign countries. The domestic power is the power against domestic lobbies, and the foreign one is the government's international power. To do so, this paper tries to evaluate the effects of these powers on the formation of free trade agreements (FTAs). The theoretical framework follows an oligopolistic-political economy. The main findings of the study show that the optimal solution for the government is paying more attention to the national welfare than lobbie's welfare. In addition, larger FTA helps the government have lower dependency on the lobbies. The paper indicates that the effects of foreign power on FTAs and shows that a larger FTA does not have always positive effects on expanding the FTAs. The effects depend on both domestic and foreign powers that are precisely described through this paper. The issues dealt here are not only theoretically interesting but are relevant while designing domestic and foreign policies.

The aim of international economic sanctions is imposing economic restrictions on target countries. In order to decrease the sanctions negative brunt on citizenry and make it ineffective, government may respond to sanctions through policies such as increasing the supply of public goods. This paper studies the regime changes of government expenditures in Iranian economy in response to economic sanctions using Markov-Switching model during period of 1978 to 2014. The results from estimated specified model indicate that firstly total, constructive and current expenditures in response to sanctions follow Markov-Switching pattern. Secondly, total, constructive and current expenditures in response to sanctions raise, and this finding confirm using public goods as defensive tool to contrast sanctions in Iran.

Over the past few decades, good governance has become an important issue in public administration. One key reason behind this reality is the paramount role of government in promoting sustainable development and protecting the environment. Therefore, evaluating the impact of good governance on the quality of the environment could be taken into consideration by both economic researchers and policy makers. This paper deals with the impact of good governance on the environmental pollution in Iran and its competitors of 2025 vision document (i.e., South West Asian Countries, SWAC) over the period of 2002-2015. The results maintain that government effectiveness, quality of law, rule of law and control of corruption (as representative indicators of good governance) have significant effect on pollution. The degree of the economic openness and economic growth do indicate negative and significant relation with environment pollution as well. Therefore, improving good governance indices in selected countries including Iran could potentially reduce the pollution over there.

In this paper it has been attempted to investigate the capability of the consumption-based capital asset pricing model (CCAPM), using the general method of moment (GMM), with regard to the Epstien-zin recursive preferences model for Iran's capital market. Generally speaking, recursive utility permits disentangling of the two psychologically separate concepts of risk aversion and elasticity of intertemporal substitution which are constrained to be equal to the inverse of each other for the traditional time-additive utility functions. Rather than using the stock market as a proxy for wealth, we constructed a more comprehensive return which is the weighted average of stock index return, labor wage growth (as a proxy for human capital return), housing return and deposit return. The empirical results demonstrate that the signs of the coefficient of the relative risk aversion and the intertemporal elasticity of substitution are the same, which means that investors have homogeneous attitudes toward the risk across the states of nature and the risk over time in Iran but different ones in their values. Therefore, the assumption that the relative risk aversion is equal to the reciprocal of the elasticity of substitution is not valid in Iran's stock market.

Examining society’s preferences for any change in the status of wetlands, can translate their direct and indirect benefits into monetary values and provide useful information for the policy makers and planners. Hoor-al-Azim Wetland (also Hoor-al-Hoveizeh) is one of the four large wetlands with an area of over 125 thousand hectares located in Khuzestan province located in southwestern Iran on its border with Iraq. In this study, using market-pricing method, the direct use value of the wetland including agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, fishing and hunting was calculated for the year 2015. Also, using choice modeling analysis, indirect use values, option values and non-use values of the wetland were estimated for the non-market attributes including natural landscape, ecological function, biodiversity and education services. The values obtained are indicative of the value that Hourol-Azim wetland has for the society. Therefore, any conservation program of the wetland is supported by the society.

The Tehran Stock Exchange fell in recession in December 2013, as it roughly persisted until the end of 2015. However, there are significant differences in the various industries both in terms of the beginning of recession and in terms of the end of recession. By the evaluation of the Bulls and Bears Markets in the major industries in the Tehran Stock Exchange, the recession contexts can be identified and indicated.
In the present study, the Lunde and Timmermann approach is applied to identify the situation of the different industries during the period of November 2008 to February 2016 and, Cox regression is used to examine the impact of the industry type and the main macroeconomic variables effect on the continuation of the Bears Market.
Result and The results indicated that since the beginning towards the end of the recession between the under-study industries, there are many differences, which can be used as a criterion to identify the key industries in the recession of the capital market. In addition, the results of Cox regression indicate that the type of industry and the inflation rate have a significant effect on the continuation of the Bears Market.