Journal of Money & Economy
Volume:12 Issue: 1, Winter 2017

This paper uses monthly price indices of 448 items of manufacturing sector in 2004:4 to 2016:01, to study the effect of exchange rate and its volatilities on price setting behavior of manufacturing sectors. Given that, many manufacturing sectors in Iran need to import raw materials, intermediate and capital goods in their production process, it is expected that exchange rate variations affect price setting behavior indices (frequency and size of price changes) in various manufacturing sectors. The results show that an increase in the exchange rate and also an increase in the exchange rate volatility lead to an increase in the frequency of price changes. In addition, while the exchange rate, itself, does not affect the size of price changes, the exchange rate volatility negatively affects the size of price changes. That is, manufacturers’ response to the exchange rate increase is limited to an increase in the frequency of price changes, but an increase in the exchange rate volatility increases the frequency of price changes and decreases the size of price changes. Also, the frequency of price changes in manufacturing sectors with high level of competitiveness and low level of raw material inventory is positively affected by the exchange rate increase.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the system of oil revenues effects on the production performance of oil-rich countries in both short and long-run. To reveal new insight, a macroeconomic model is designed to hypothesize long-run structural relations in the economies of the oil-rich countries including three long-run relationships of real output, real money balance, and the adjusted purchasing power parity and short-run dynamics of variables within the framework of a Vector Error Correction Model. The model is estimated based on the annual data of 33 oil-rich countries during the period of 1992 to 2016. The existence of three long-run relationships in the economies of oil-rich countries is confirmed. Based on the estimated model, the net effect of oil revenues changes on production is directly related to the institutional quality index. In countries with the institutional quality lower than the threshold, the net effect of increasing oil revenues on production in the long-run is negative, and in contrast, in countries with higher institutional quality, this effect is positive and will be strengthened by increasing institutional quality. The institutional quality threshold is estimated to be 0.23.

Nowadays, Foreign Capital Inflows (FCIs) are considered as a catalyst for economic development and an important source of transferring technology and foreign exchange earnings from developed to developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of FCIs (which include foreign direct investment, personal remittances and official development investment) on economic growth in Iran. An Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach is used over the period 1992-2016. The results indicate that all the three of foreign capital inflows have positive and significant impacts on economic growth in the short-run and long-run. However, Foregin Direct Investment (FDI) and Public Relations (PR) have more effects than Official Development Assistant (ODA) on economic growth of Iran. The study suggests the design and implementation of appropriate fiscal, monetary and trade policies to complement the flow of foreign capital inflows to realize of its full impact on growth.

Good implementation of corporate governance principles is considered as an important component for stability and soundness of a financial institution. An extensive body of literature has reviewed the effects of corporate governance on the performance of corporations. The majority of these studies have found more corporate values for implementing the principles. Therefore, the assessment of compliance with corporate governance principles is a critical factor for external inspectors to ensure long-term sustainability of any economic organization. Based on these, this research aims to introduce a mechanism for assessing corporate governance in Iranian banks. This mechanism helps to calculate points for ranking of any banks compared to other banks and with regard to the compliance with four corporate governance principles: accountability, responsibility, transparency and fairness. To this end, and based on corporate governance principles, a set of measurements, elements and sub-indices have been introduced that some of them are estimated. The value domain for each of sub-indices is determined with respect to the published information by the bank. This paper has introduced 153 sub-indices, 17 elements and 3 measures that explain corporate governance. These are all valued and altogether in the form of a suitable model, make possible to calculate the Corporate Governance Index (CGI) in a usury-free bank.

The capital market in each country is considered as the most important part of the economy and its fluctuations may reflect the economic situation of the country. In this paper, the hypothesis of convergence of stock market price indices in Asian countries during the period from January 2007 to February 2017 is investigated using cluster analysis method. The results show that there is no evidence of overall convergence among countries. However, there are three converging clusters between stock markets while the Jordanian stock market forms a non-convergent cluster. These findings should assist portfolio managers in the design and implementation of appropriate portfolio management strategies. Regulatory authorities can also benefit from the design of financial regulation.

Financial intermediation in Iran's banking system is negatively affected at least in two ways. First, there are many similarities between financial intermediation and usurious activities in the common interpretation of interest-free banking law. This encourages the banks to participate in various commercial activities. Second, the price setting policies of the central bank makes investment more attractive compared to financial intermediation. In this research, the ratio of interest margin to gross income is selected as an index of financial intermediation and its importance in increasing the short-run and long-run economic growth is investigated using a dynamic linear regression model. Annual data is used and the sample includes 2005 to 2015. Using a methodology similar to Leamer (1983), a large set of control variables is chosen. The main statistical hypothesis is that financial intermediation has negative effect on economic growth. The results show that the rate of rejection of this hypothesis increases as we move from short-run to long-run regressions. In other words, the positive effect of financial intermediation on growth is a long-run phenomenon.