Iranian Journal of Economic Studies
Volume:4 Issue: 2, Autumn 2015

The net effects of switching from consumption taxation to inflation taxation on resource allocation and welfare crucially depend on production externalities. With elastic labor supply, raising inflation taxation decreases leisure, but increases the levels of real consumption, capital, and output. Moreover, this tax switch has two opposing effects on the level of real money balances: A positive effect through the rise in output caused by the faster nominal money growth and a negative one through the fall in the ratio of real money balances to output. In the absence of any production, externality the negative effect dominates the positive effect. The real effect of this tax switching on resource allocation depends on the behavior of labor supply. If there is not a trade-off between leisure and labor supply, then the real effect of switching to inflaction taxation on real consumption, capital and output would disappear. With elasticity of labor supply, the welfare effect of this tax switch is conditional on the production externality. In the absence of production externality, inflation taxation always reduces welfare. With a strong enough production externality, switching from consumption taxation to inflation taxation may raise welfare by correcting the under-investment of capital and the under-supply of labor.

The recent financial crisis has raised several questions with respect to the financial institutions and banking industry. Hence, over the last decade the Iranian banking industry has undergone many substantial changes, such as liberalization, government regulation and technological advances. What impacts do these changes have on the policy instruments? We have answered this question in this study. To do this, we used the DSGE models. We also used two kinds of basic DSGE structures: External Finance Premium (EFP) Model and Collateral Constraint (CC) Model. Both models are simulated for Iran. Finally, we have examined the effects of monetary shocks for each model variables. We employed a Bayesian method to estimate the parameters of DSGE models. We have concluded that the prediction power of the EFP models is better than that of CC model. In addition, the results showed that the increase in liquidity raises output, inflation, investment and consumption. Moreover, it was found that the responses of variables to monetary policy in the CC model was greater than of the EFP model.

Tourism is a multidimensional economic activity that has an interaction with the environment. On one hand, environmental resources provide the raw material for tourism, while on the other, tourism imposes a variety of negative and positive impacts (wanted or unwanted) on the environment through the creation of various by-products. The main purpose of the current study is to investigate the relationship between tourism and environmental performance in the Caspian Sea nations during 2002-2013. A panel data vector autoregressive (P-VAR) method has been employed to estimate the model. Findings from the impulse-response function analysis and variance decomposition show that the reactions of international tourism to environmental performance, human development index, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, and the degree of trade openness in the Caspian Sea nations are positive. Moreover, the reaction of environmental performance to tourism and GDP per capita shocks is negative. The results also show that the responses of environmental performance to human capital index, the degree of trade openness and the square of GDP per capita shocks are positive. According to the findings, it is suggested that countries in the Caspian Sea region should pay a special attention to environmental issues in the development of tourism.

In this study, we use a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model to investigate the household portfolio channel of monetary and credit shocks transmission in Iran. In this regard, we developed a canonical New Keynesian DSGE model with financial and banking sectors. The model is estimated by Bayesian method for the period 1990-2012. The result showed that the current and expected prices of financial and physical assets affected their optimal proportions in household portfolio. Second, banking sector had a significant impact on the household portfolio composition and also on the real sector variables. More specifically, a positive deposit rate shock reduced the proportions of financial and physical assets in household portfolio and increased marginal cost and inflation. This shock decreased investment and output. Third, a positive shock on stock price had negative effects on demand for other assets in household portfolio but these effects were discharged rapidly. Moreover, the housing price shock had similar effects on demand for mentioned assets but the effects were discharged slowly. The results emphasized the role of credit, banking and assets markets sectors in financial fluctuation, business cycles and monetary transmission in Iran.

The relationship between democracy and environment has always been controversial. Some scientists found that democracy had a positive impact on reducing environmental disruption. Other scholars claimed that democracy tends to accelerate environmental degradation. Ther are many studies focusing on main determinants of environmental degradation. More recently, democracy is considered to be one of factors affecting environmental quality. This research studies the relationship between democracy and environment quality in selected Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries by using panel data model for the period 2000-2010. The results of estimation show that democracy affects environment quality directly in these countries. Moreover, we find that economic growth and trade have positive effect on environmental quality. However, energy consumption and population have negative effect on environment in selected OIC countries.

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the effects of technology transfer through the imports of intermediate goods by developing countries developed countries with the emphasis on Iran economy. For this purpose, we used multi-sectoral and multi–regional computable general equilibrium GTAP model (multi-sectoral and multi-regional CGE model). The paper examined the effect of a ten percent productivity shock in high-tech industries of industrial countries on economic sectors of Iran. The result shows that technology transfer embodied in Iran’s imports of intermediate goods leads to increase in outputs and decrease in prices. Factors such as absorptive capacity, structural similarity and effectiveness contributed to the spillover effects of technological improvements in Iran.