فرشاد فاطمی

For more than a decade, researchers of Neuromarketing in the field of decision-making neuroscience have been studying the limitations, cognitive biases, and stereotypes of consumers. The purpose of this study was to examine the cognitive bias of "what is beautiful is good" on consumer’s purchasing decisions. The appearance of the product is one of the most important factors in the consumer's decision to purchase a product, however, functional information might lead to a breach of expectation in the purchase decision.In order to investigate this phenomenon, 40 female undergraduate students of Tabriz University were selected by convenience sampling method. In this study, 140 wearable gadgets in four categories of beautiful products and standard products, and congruent and incongruent functional information were presented, using eevoke software, in order to investigate the purchase decisions of the participants.Repeated measurement analysis shows that when congruent information is provided, participants have a faster response time to a purchase decision task. The interactive effect of product appearance and information was also significant.The results of this study show that information processing can be as effective as the appearance of the product. These results complement previous and recent findings on “what is beautiful is good” cognitive bias and suggest that functional information is important in interacting with product appearance in the purchasing decision process.

Pyramidal ownership structures and cross-ownership are common phenomena in developing economies. These structures result in a divergence between voting rights and cash flow rights on the one hand, and create internal capital markets through which firms can raise capital internally instead of going to the public market when they need additional financing. In the present study, the effects of firm interlock and stock price synchronicity in Iran Stock Market was investigated. We used a unique data set containing stock ownership and directors of all companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange considering three definitions of management, stockholding, and ownership and examined interlock through both equity ties and interlocking directors. We found that over 40 percent of all listed companies belong to networks of interconnected companies and there was a significantly positive relationship between being a member in each of these networks and the profitability of the firm alongside other colleagues. We also documented a complex set of networks among listed and unlisted companies, which have not been previously documented. We further find that pairwise interlocks through equity ties – either direct ownership or common owner – are correlated with higher stock price synchronicity, whereas common directorship is not linked to return co-movement. We can also claim that the effect is decreasing as firms become farther away from each other within a network. The results show that firm interlock, particularly through cross holdings and common ownership, can increase stock price synchronicity.

One of the most important issues to consider in conflicting trans-boundary river basins like Helmand is the potential for agricultural development. This paper evaluates the land use changes between in the Helmand basin between 1990 and 2013 using remote sensing images and an object-based method. The results show the irrigated land area has changed from 10,000 to 18,000 km2 during this period while rainfed areas decreased by 70%. Using the GEOMOD method and Markov chain evaluations, it is projected that agricultural areas can expand up to 25,465 km2, that means an additional 7465 km2 of agricultural land development. Considering water availability limitation, the maximum agricultural land development cannot exceed 4366 km2. The spatial evaluation of this progress revealed that development is mainly expected to take place in the Arghandab and Middle Helmand sub-basins that can seriously affect the river inflows to Iran and threaten the security and ecosystem in the region. However, considering the new policy of Iran on cross-border farming this can be turned to an opportunity for a win-win management of the Helmed trans-boundary river basin.

The question of whether parents have preferences over their children’s sexes has long been of interest to economists and demographers. In this study, we first investigate the presence of these preferences among Iranian parents. Then, having established its existence, we next turn to characterize the quality of sex preference. There are two widely used methods for addressing this issue in the literature. The first is to estimate a Logit model which relates the probability of the birth of a new child to the sexes of its elder siblings. The second is to estimate a proportional hazard model that links the time interval before each birth to the sexes of preceding children. This study makes use of both methods. The results confirm the existence of sex preferences in Iran. Iranian parents are shown to favor a rather balanced mix of boys and girls, though boys seem to be slightly preferred over girls.

The challenges between Iran and Afghanistan have different aspects. Definitely, with water as the common point, the production of opium in Afghanistan and saving the environment of the eastern Iran are the most important ones. This research work aims to assess a new approach in the water-related interactions between Iran and Afghanistan using the sequential and issue linkage methods of game theory. A number of incentives like transfer of agricultural technologies are evaluated for possible decrease in opium cultivation simultaneously achieving more payoff for Afghanistan and increased inflows to Iran. The results showed that the successfulness of this strategic cooperation is highly dependent on opium price such that the incentives are efficient only for prices up to about $200 per kg of opium. For the higher prices their capacity reduces drastically. The research highlighted how issue linkage can be useful in international relations to solve a long lasting transboundary water conflict and achievement of a win-win solution for the riparian parties.