نشریه اقتصاد و الگوسازی
پیاپی 32 (زمستان 1396)

Unemployment is one of the major challenges facing the Iranian economy, and one of the government duties in the economy is to reduce unemployment. So, the aim of this paper is to study the macroeconomic factors affecting the unemployment rate in different provinces, with emphasis on cost credits and capital asset ownership during 2008-2015. The results indicate that cost credits have a significant positive effect and acquisition of capital assets have a significant negative effect on the unemployment rate in the provinces.With the increase in government cost credits, increased which has led to a reduction in productivity and an increase in unemployment. The increase in government acquisition of capital assets has had a complementary role for the private sector and has reduced the unemployment rate through providing the necessary economic infrastructure. Also, the results indicate a positive effect of the ratio of total government expenditures production of provinces on unemployment. With the division of provincial unemployment into urban and rural unemployment, cost credits has had a significant positive effect on unemployment, but the effect of acquisition of capital assets on rural unemployment is not significant. Also, during the implementation of “targeted subsidies law”, the unemployment rate has increased.

International labor migration is one of the most important and effective socio-economic phenomena that exists in different countries. This phenomenon can have economic impacts on the destination and sending countries. Assessment of these effects can be useful for economic decision making. So, in this paper using a regional computable general equilibrium model (base year 2011), we have addressed the impacts of international labor migration with special attention to the issue of worker’s remittance. To this purpose, we analyzed two different scenarios: 1) ten percent outflow of skilled labor from Iran and 2) ten percent inflow of skilled work force to Iran. The results of the first scenario show that labor outflow negatively impacts on production and exports and positively impacts on prices and imports at the macro and sectoral levels. The negative effects on economic variables will be reduced if the work force outflow combined with remittances. Quantitative results also indicate that remittances improve the income and welfare of households. According to second scenario, inflow of labor increases the sectoral exports and production and decreases imports and prices (macro and sectoral).

The stock market is one of the most prominent examples of financial markets, which has always attracted economists’ attentions in terms of understanding its nature, the mode of its performance, and factors affecting it. Meanwhile, the foreign exchange market can be considered as a competitor for the stock market and, depending on the export or import-based nature of the economy, may affect the country and the stock market differently. Empirical research has indicated positive and negative effects of the exchange rate on stock price index. Therefore, considering the significance of this issue, the aim of this study was to analyze the asymmetric effects of the exchange rate on stock price index in the period of 2001/1-2017/3using seasonal data for Iran's economy. To this end, the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model was estimated and the effects of exchange rate, interest rate, real liquidity and consumer price index on the stock price index were investigated. The results show that the decrease in the exchange rate has a positive and significant effect on the stock price index in the short and long-run, but the increase in the exchange rate in both periods has not significant effect on the stock market. Therefore, the exchange rate has an asymmetric effect on the stock price index.

The Iranian banking sector is experiencing changes such as the expansion of private banks, the entry of foreign banks and the likely mergers of several banks and non-bank credit institution. Therefore, studying the process of structural changes in the banking market and determining its competitiveness, can help the policy makers and planners of the banking system in structural reforms and directing monetary policy. In this study, using the structural approach and calculating the three concentration indexes,( the k Bank, Herfindahl-Hirschman, as well as the number of bank's optimality criteria), we examined the banking market structure in Iran. The sample of the study includes all domestic banks and the period under review is 1991-2016. The results show that the Iran's banking market during the period under review has tended to reduce concentration and increase competition. Also, competition in facilities has been more than two other dimensions of assets and deposits. Further, the effect of hypothetical mergers between two groups of banks (banks owned by armed forces and small banks) on the competitive conditions of the banking market was measured using the Herfindahl-Hirschman index and the number of bank's optimality criteria. The results show that such mergers have an insignificance impact on the increase of concentration and lead to an improvement in the number of bank's optimality criteria.

The international tourism industry has a high potential for creating foreign exchange earnings and employment growth. Hence, attention to this industry can play an important role in the economic development of Iran. The study tries to propose a theoretical and empirical model that highlights the role of tourism services quality and endogenous tourism in economic growth. Hence a theoretical growth model of international trade has been employed where tourism is the main reason for growth and quality of tourism services has a positive impact on long-term growth. The study also provides the empirical analysis to test the relation between tourism quality and economic growth in Iran during 1969-2015. The results show that the tourist arrivals and quality of tourism accommodations have a positive effect on domestic GDP, but foreign GDP has a negative effect on it. The findings support a two-way causal relationship between real GDP growth and tourism growth in Iran.

Despite extensive studies on the housing market, most of these studies are related to housing demand and not on housing supply. However, identifying the factors affecting supply, especially in the short run and medium term, are key issues in this sector. In this regard, this research has been tried to estimate the price elasticity of the supply of housing according to provincial data for the period of 14 years (2000-2013) by studying the factors affecting the supply of new housing in Iran. For this purpose, using partial equilibrium of housing market, housing supply and demand functions are estimated using the simultaneous equation econometric method and panel data. Given the dynamism of the demand equation, the Generalized Moment Method (GMM) has been used to estimate the parameters. The results show that the price elasticity of the supply of housing in the short run is 0.25 and in the medium term is 0.5. Therefore, due to the lack of supply of housing, shocks on demand side will lead to a sharp increase in prices in this sector.