نشریه تحلیل های اقتصادی توسعه ایران
سال سوم شماره 2 (پیاپی 7، تابستان 1394)

This study focuses on the long-term relationships among three factors affecting economic development and demographic transitions including GDP per capita, human development index and fertility rate across two groups of developed and developing countries during 1993- 2010. To this end, the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) estimation techniques is used. Empirical findings reveal that lifestyles vary between developed and developing societies. In developing countries, development model is characterized by high fertility, high income and low human development, while, in developed countries, it is accompanied by low fertility, high income and high human development.

Predicting continuation of the activity of a bank for future periods is an important element in the decision-making process by bank supervisors. The choice of the appropriate method and variable to predict is the main challenging problem in the literature of predicting financial fragility. The neural network model is one of the most advanced predictive models of financial fragility. In the sample under study, using theoretical and empirical literature, financial fragility index is defined according to the structure of the banking network of Iran. Then, the significance of financial ratios is tested using t-test and mean of two samples is tested at 95% confidence level applying Levin statistic. Then, a neural network model is designed with inclusion of significant explanatory financial ratios. To test the accuracy of the model, the classification table and a Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve is used. Results show that the predictive power of the model is 96%. According to the findings of this paper, credit risk and liquidity risk are the most important explanatory factors of financial fragility.

Unemployment is an important factor in reducing happiness. The empirical researches has demonstrated negative effect of unemployment on happiness. The point that has received less attention in previous studies is the role played by level of unemployment on its effectiveness on happiness. Using a panel data for 146 countries, this paper examines the unemployment effect on happiness and measures the amount of such effectiveness. The results indicate the negative impacts of unemployment and inflation rates and positive effect of the human development index on happiness. In addition, the coefficient of change in the slope of unemployment in its threshold rate is 12% and significant. Thus, the amount of unemployment impact on happiness depends on unemployment rate, so that the negative effect of unemployment is exaggerated with increase in unemployment rate beyond threshold rate. The comparison between coefficients of unemployment and inflation rates show that unemployment rate has more negative effect on happiness than inflation rate. Therefore, policy-makers are recommended to pay more attention to unemployment rate and to control it.

Oil-rich countries, including Iran, have acquired enormous windfalls from oil exports during last decades. These earnings have affected economic growth of the oil-endowed countries both directly and indirectly through changing governments’ intervention/influence in social and political fields and reducing institutional quality and increasing political risks. In this paper, using a simultaneous equations model for Iran’s economy, we study the impact of oil revenue on institutional quality, on the one hand, and the impact of institutional indexes on economic growth, on the other hand. The results indicate that oil has been used as a tool for political governance in Iran over the period 1984-2012. In other words, the increase in oil revenues through reducing institutional quality and increasing political risks has lowered the economic growth.

In the current study, we examine the effects of minimum wages on the wages of men and women employed in the agricultural sector during 1981 – 2013. To this end, we use an Auto-Regressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) model. The findings show that minimum wage and inflation play effective roles in determining the wages of men in the short-run, and the minimum wage and labor productivity in agriculture are main determinants of male employees in the long-run. However, unemployment and labor productivity in the short-term and the unemployment rate and inflation rate in long-term have no effect on men’s wages. The minimum wage is the only influential factor in determining the women’s wages in agriculture. Thus, the unemployment rate, inflation rate and labor productivity in agriculture have no effect on the determination of women’s wages. In addition, the minimum wage has greater impact on women than men's wages. In the short term, a one percent increase in the minimum wage increases the men’s and women’s wages by 0.28% and 0.48%, respectively. However, a one percent increase in the minimum wage increases the men's and women's wages by 0.77% and 0.82%, respectively, in the long run. Therefore, enforcement of the minimum wage law reduces gender-based wage discrimination in the Iranian agricultural sector.

The housing sector plays crucial role in economic growth because of its strong forward linkages with other economic sectors. However, this sector has faced with sharp fluctuations in the housing prices across urban areas in the past two decades. Economic development is the main goal of each country with regard to improve living standards. In addition, the urban development is an important source of national development. Municipalities are associated with the housing sector due to their linkages with urban construction projects. The different factors affect housing prices. Using a Vector Auto-Regressive (VAR) model, this paper aims to examine the effects of paying tolls on housing prices in Tehran, capital of Iran. Applying quarterly data over the period 2005-2013, the estimation results indicate a unidirectional causality relationship running from housing price to housing renovation tolls. In addition, this paper finds a unidirectional causality relation running from housing price to total housing tolls. The other finding of this research is a unidirectional causality link from renovation tolls to total tolls in the housing sector.