Iranian Journal of Economic Studies
Volume:8 Issue: 2, Summer and Autumn 2019

This study applied a prediction-based portfolio optimization model to explore the results of portfolio predicament in the Tehran Stock Exchange. To this aim, first, the data mining approach was used to predict the petroleum products and chemical industry using clustering stock market data. Then, some effective factors, such as crude oil price, exchange rate, global interest rate, gold price, and S&P 500 index, were used to estimate each industry index using Radial Basis Function and Multi-Layer Perceptron neural networks. Finally, by comparing the validation ratios in a bullish market using K-Means, SOM, and Fuzzy C-means clustering algorithms, the best algorithm was employed to predict indicators for each industry. The sample was collected between December 15, 2008, and April 25, 2018. The results revealed that the Multi-Layer Perceptron algorithm had the highest accuracy and was the best option for portfolio predicament. However, the Fuzzy C-means algorithm produced the best clusters. Practical results showed that Sepahan oil and Kharg petrochemical stocks were the most important stocks in the short term while Kharg petrochemical, Fannavaran petrochemical, and Tehran oil refinery stocks made higher contributions in a stock portfolio in the medium- or long-term.

This paper examines the theory of purchasing power parity aboutthe exchange rate of the dollar with local currencies in MENAcountries - the Middle East and North Africa - using a unit root testestablished on the quantile auto regressive model during the period1980-2017. This test, like other unit root tests, uses auto regressivemodel, unlike other methods that emphasize the mean of thedependent variable, this test employees different variables orquantiles for estimating the regression. If the theory of purchasingpower parity is in place, the real exchange rate will be stationary.According to the results of quantile unit root test, the real exchangerate for dollar in all countries except the four countries ofMorocco, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Jordan has a unit root and isnot stationary. Therefore, except for the four countries mentioned,the theory of purchasing power parity is not true in other studiedcountries. This result could be due to the difference inmacroeconomic conditions and less flexibility of the foreignexchange system in these countries compared to developedcountries.

In Direct Tax Act, penalties and incentives are two strategies for realization of the expected tax revenues. In this study the interaction between individual businesses taxpayers' behaviors and National Tax Administration is investigated by using prospect theory which is based on behavioral economics approach. For this purpose, the structure of the tax compliance of the mentioned taxpayers is evaluated via the changes in penalty and incentive rates. In this way, a special questionnaire regarding the items of individual businesses sector of Direct Tax Act was designed for tax compliance evaluating and the results obtained using Bayesian Hierarchical method. The results indicate that the investigated individual business taxpayers, at all income levels were more sensitive toward incentive rates, so that this result can be useful for tax policymakers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the optimal monetary and fiscal policies with emphasis on a non-inflationary exit from economic stagnation in Iran. In the first stage, Iran’s economy has been modeled in the form of a New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model (NK-DSGE). After modeling and extracting the system of equations, the structural parameters of the model have been estimated by using seasonal data from 1989 to 2016 and also the Bayesian approach. The results show that monetary and fiscal expansionary policies increase production though they are associated with inflation. In the second stage, the optimal monetary and fiscal rules have been extracted from a social loss function, and accordingly the conditions of a non-inflationary exit from stagnation have been investigated. The results of the simulation show that the optimal monetary policy cannot by itself lead to the exit of the economy from stagnation without inflation. However, if this policy is applied along with an optimal fiscal policy, a non-inflationary exit from economic stagnation can be achieved.

This paper focuses on strategic trade policy in the form of export subsidies in Cournot duopoly structure for differentiated goods. Export subsidies affect social welfare in both static and dynamic situations , and the aim of this paper is to analyze and compare the welfare effects of export subsidies in one-period and multi-period games in differentiated goods markets. To analyze the welfare effects of export subsidies, a two-stage game of complete but inperfect information is considered. In the first stage, two governments determine the amount of export subsidies and in the second stage, two firms determine the product level. The results show that, given that the firms’ competitiveness do not differ so much, export subsidies by both governments increase the firms’ profits and decrease social welfare of both countries. In an infinitely repeated game with different discount factors for both countries, and by adopting trigger strategy, we create some conditions, in which both governments commit free trade. However, if the competitiveness of one firm is so greater than the other, free trade using trigger strategy is not stable and the country with more competitive firm has incentive to deviate.

The aim of this paper was to investigate the processes of organizational innovation in medical tourism businesses. Specifically, this research aimed to answer: ―What is the process of developing medical tourism businesses in a developing country like Iran?‖ For this purpose, a grounded theory approach was used. In-depth interviews were conducted with fifteen medical tourism entrepreneurs who had experienced the above mentioned process. Analyzing the structure of values and interactions of entrepreneurs with others through their interviews led to the formation of an intermediate theory. The pattern obtained from this study shows that the main category that led to innovations among the studied medical tourism businesses was entrepreneurs’ tendency to create entrepreneurial activities, that is an innovative initiative. Based on our findings, should an innovative entrepreneur be affected by intermediate and environmental conditions, he or she introduces specific strategies to effectively carry out entrepreneurial activities that are discussed in this paper.

This investigation is an endeavor to appraise the language of Resilient economy aiming at modeling it discursively for the first time in Iran. In this vein, postulating the thematic analysis proposed by Ary et al. (2010) as the analytical framework, this study integrated the concepts utilized in the discourse of Resilient economy extracted from various materials, articles, excerpts, interviews, and questionnaires through diverse qualitative techniques such as open, axial, and selective codifications. Moreover, to select a subset of common concepts and remove the redundant ones, factor analysis was applied as a quantitative technique. The findings elucidated two major theoretical views, i.e. macroscopic and microscopic. Macroscopic view accounts for the themes of history and philosophy behind Resilient economy, while microscopic view illuminates four themes of requirements, principles, objectives, and application procedures, which altogether comprised a model describing Resilient economy in the Iranian context. In the denouement, it was concluded that Resilient economy is the essence of Islamic and monotheistic economy where justice, fairness, democracy and knowledge shine as its premises, conducive to bolstering independence, flourish, innovation, entrepreneurship, and constant success and growth. Parenthetically, the study proposed some implications for economics teachers and discourse analysts at the end.

The restrictions of government resources and the recent alterations in the economy have prompted government agencies to employ the capacities of private sector in all infrastructures. In this regard, a variety of financing methods, including the participatory models, have been applied for many years in the water and wastewater industry of Iran. The aim of this study is to identify and prioritize the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) indicators in the water and wastewater industry of Iran via machine learning techniques. To this end, after collecting, preparing and preprocessing the data, weighted indexing techniques including information gain and Gini index were utilized to prioritize the PPP factors. The results indicated that 93% of the indicators were effective in predicting the success of the projects. To compare the two methods, the precision of Naïve Bayes and Random Forest classifiers were taken into account and the information gain method yielded more reasonable findings with one percent difference. The evaluation of indicators elucidated that "complaints about service quality," "contract type," and "Conventional tariffs" revealed a huge impact on the success of collaborative projects. Among the 15 indicators, eight were directly pertinent to the project financing which is the main concern in this industry.

Food is considered as an integral part of tourism experience, and culinary tourism is a relatively new concept in the tourism industry. Culinary tourism deals with cookery, cuisines, and food ways of a country, region, or locale as a unique and memorable activity. The present study was aimed to prioritize factors influencing culinary tourism development using marketing mix strategy in Khorasan Razavi province, Iran. This applied research was performed by descriptive–survey method. The population consisted of experts in tourism and hotel management as well as experts in food industry, cookery, and restaurant management. Using stratified random sampling, first 200 participants were selected to fill the questionnaire, in order to identify effective factors, and then, 10 experts were asked to rank these factors. Confirmatory factor analysis and Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process were employed to analyze the data. Findings of the study suggested that, among the four marketing mix strategies, price-related factors with a normal weight of 0.033 ranked first, and in terms of sub criteria related to study dimensions, matching prices to product quality and branding of local food products with a weight of 0.095 and 0.093, respectively were identified as the top factors influencing culinary tourism development.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between government size and happiness inequality in a number of developing and developed countries during the period of 2002-2015 by threshold panel approach. To obtain robust results, we have applied the model in the Iran’s economy by time series data during the period of 1974-2016. The results in developing countries showed that in small governments, the government size had a diminutive effect on the inequality of happiness, but by passing the threshold and increasing the government's involvement in the economy, this variable had no significant effect on the happiness inequality. The same time series results were obtained for Iran’s economy, which has a small government size. In this group, the government size has a significant negative impact on happiness inequality and after that, it has a significant positive impact on happiness inequality. Developed countries showed completely different results, whereby the size of the government had a significant positive impact on inequality in small governments but in large governments, it did not have a significant effect on the inequality of happiness.

Exchange rate fluctuations have a major role on business cycles. Due to this degree of importance, this paper analyzed the effects of managed floating exchange rate regime on dynamics of some macroeconomics variables of Iran. To do this, we design a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for Iran and then using quarterly data over 1989-2016 and Bayesian method, the structural parameters of the model have been estimated. By employing conditional forecasting, our results show that managed floating exchange rate regime, compared with fixed regime, brings more economic growth and at the same time, less speculative activities in money and exchange markets. Moreover, the results from variance decomposition reveal that exchange rate shocks are the most important shock in deriving business cycles and fluctuations of other variables. Based on these finding, we propose policymaker to choose managed floating exchange rate regime as its policy rule.

The current skills of leaders will not be enough to succeed in future. Future leaders should be equipped with new literacies. This study intend to generate the new pattern of the new leadership literacies of senior managers of economic areas.The method of research was qualitative content analysis and reference data of research included the books of Hames (2007) and Johansen (2017), which were completely studied. Unit of analysis was theme. The study findings included 184 basic themes in the top ten themes of literacy organizers: 1.’Networked Intelligence’: Adaptation through learning; 2.‘Futuring’: to cope better with complexity; 3.’Strategic Navigation’: helping to assure the long-term viability of the whole system; 4.’Deep Design’: continuous consciousness; 5.’Brand Resonance’: Viral forms of communication; 6.’Looking Backward from the Future’: Clarity; 7.’Voluntary Fear Engagement’: turning fear into something positive; 8.‘Leadership for Shape-Shifting Organizations’: liquid leadership; 9.’Being There When You’re Not There’: very skilled at choosing the best media for communicating, and 10.’Creating and Sustaining Positive Energy’: balancing their own personal energy. In the new era, administrators equipped with new literacies, would help them develop the organization, their subordinates, and respond to the environment and gain competitive advantage.