نشریه اقتصاد و الگوسازی
پیاپی 7-8 (پاییز و زمستان 1390)

In the economic theory, there is a strong relationship between interest rates and inflation. During recent years, some of most prominent policies has been proposed to reduce the indicative profit rates in the banks with an intention to curb the prevailing inflation, enhance investment and finally the employment in the country.
In this research, the share of financial costs was calculated as one of the production costs for active companies in Iran's stock market. It was shown that financial costs are approximately 15-50 percent of production costs. The financial costs share in the GDP was estimated about 33-38 percent of GDP.
This paper employs Johansen-Juselius and Error-Correction Models to investigate the existence of a long-run relationship and the causality between two mentioned variables. They illustrate that the causality is from interest rate to inflation rate. Due to high proportion of financial costs in the costs of firms, interest rates can be reduced to decrease inflation.

The findings of research about determinants of inflation are different or even inconsistent, since each are based on the researcher’s point of view. In order not to face this problem, in this paper, the researchers use Bayesian averaging method. First, 350000 regression equations (based on data from 1353 to 87) were estimated and it was found that the growth rate of cash has a positive and significant effect on Iran’s inflation, and it is not just a monetary phenomenon. For confidence, the Bayesian averaging process was repeated twice with the change of the only pre-assumption of model’s size from 8 to 10 and then to 12 (1190000 equations was estimated totally)..

A substantial rise in the price of electricity, which took place within the subsidy reform program of the year 2011 in Iran, led to a heavy increase in production costs. This rise of production costs is expected to induce a considerable impact on the industrial output. The main goal of this study is to estimate the effects of increased electricity prices on the production costs and output of 23 industrial subsectors in the Iranian Economy. To this end, a multifactor translog cost function, with three factors of production, namely electricity, labor and capital, are adopted and estimated within a panel system framework. The impacts of any price liberalization on electricity demand depends on the price elasticity. However, income elasticity of demand is of crucial importance, especially for developing countries like Iran. Empirical results show that labor, electricity and capital demand are not price sensitive and their price elasticity’s are calculated as -0.16, −0.32 and -0.52. While the results indicate the existence of substitution possibilities between electricity and labor, electricity–capital inputs are complementary. This means that changes in electricity prices have an impact on labor demand and investment demand. Moreover, a 1% increase of electricity price leads to a -0.009% decrease of output and a 1% increase of electricity price causes the average cost of production to increase. This covers a range for 0.03% in recycling to 0.06% in basic metals sector.

Low unemployment rate and access to Non-Accelerating inflation rate are considered as key targets for policy makers. Thus, measuring the Non-Accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) is very important.
In this paper, we investigate the NAIRU and core inflation with a structural approach in which the two factors respond to each other simultaneously. The NAIRU is defined as a component of the real unemployment rate that is uncorrelated with inflation in the long run. In addition, the core inflation is defined as a component of real inflation that is uncorrelated with output and unemployment in medium and long run.
The findings of this paper shows that the trade-off between inflation and unemployment rate as predicted by traditional short and long run Philips Curve theory cannot be confirmed by the statistical data. Contrary to the primary conception, NAIRU and core inflation rate are time-varying and not fixed.
In This paper, also, there is no difference between NAIRU and core inflation with real unemployment and inflation respectively. That is, unemployment and inflation rate phenomena in Iranian economy have long term and structural nature.

Productivity improvement as one of the important strategies of ensuring economic growth and increasing competitiveness of industries is considered by all countries. So that industrial and developing countries have obtained a considerable part of their production growth in this way. In this study, the effect of human capital on total factor productivity of Iranian medium and large industries is investigated over the period of 1995-2007. First Malmquist TFP index, management efficiency changes, scale efficiency changes and technological changes were measured for the industry using DEAP software. Then Malmquist index changes in relation to management efficiency changes, scale efficiency changes and technological changes have been analyzed using dynamic panel methods (method AB). Research findings suggest that changes in productivity of medium and large industries have been most affected by the performance improvement, and technological and management changes.

This paper investigated the impacts of per capita income, food prices and food price subsidies on per capita calorie intake of Iranian urban Individuals. Using the Vector Autoregressive model for the years 1984-2008, a long run relationship was found between the above mentioned variables. The results also showed that shock to the income of individuals and decreasing the food price subsidies adversely affected the calorie intake of Iranian urban households.

One of the most important subjects of macroeconomic is the manner in which monetary socks affect macroeconomic variables, including the price level. In addition, the manner in which monetary shocks affect the price level in various economic conditions is very important in adopting a policy to study these effects, Markov-Switching models are used to test for asymmetric effects of monetary shocks on the price over the period 1988:2- 2008:3.
The results show that the effects of positive monetary shocks on price is higher than the effects of a negative one. That is, the monetary shocks have an asymmetric effect on the price level in recession and boom and hence, the policy makers, special central bank of Iran, must take this into account.

Modeling household automobile ownership choices is a key component of travel behavior research and car demand analysis and forecasting. This article analyses the behavior of new car buyers based on household data. Therefore, the model of buying a new car was specified and estimated by logit method on raw household budget data for 1387. Then, the market demand for new cars has been simulated and forecasted for the period 1388-90 based on out of the sample prediction of the model.
Results show that household's real income, number of employed in household, the number of students per household, the age of household head, number of household members over 20 years, and dummy variable for urban/rural have a significant effect on buying a new car by the member of household. Among the explanatory variables, the number of people over 20 years has the largest effect and the household's real income has the lowest effect on new car ownership.