Iranian Economic Review
Volume:23 Issue: 56, Summer 2019

This study investigates the impact of poverty, which is the direct effect of recent economic changes, on Iranians mental health to shed more light on the poverty and mental health nexus in developing countries. For the purpose of this study, we examine the existence of a possible association between poverty and mental health in urban districts of Iran by applying a double hurdle approach for the period of 2012-2014. We split our sample into 12 age cohorts: 21-25 … 76-80 within 4 major age groups: 21-30, 31-40, 41-60, and 61-80. The results show that there is a negative relationship between poverty and mental health for all gender and age groups. Our analysis indicates that the impact of poverty on female’s mental status is greater early in life but males mental health suffer from poverty at mid-life and end of life. We conclude that the economic burdens against Iranians, which has changed their poverty status, have also exacerbated their mental health status.

This study investigates the short-run and long-run impact of real exchange rate misalignment and volatility on Indonesian export to the US by exploiting the disaggregated data of export volume. The proxy of real exchange rate misalignment was obtained by estimating the fundamental equilibrium exchange rate (FEER) model, and the exchange rate volatility measured by employing the GARCH (1,1) model.  We employed the ARDL bound test approach to check the existence of a long-run equilibrium between export volume and the variable under consideration. Both the short-run estimation using the error correction model and the long-run model indicates that half of the commodities are significantly and positively affected by real exchange rate misalignment. However, only a small number of commodities is significantly affected by the exchange rate volatility.

This paper is an attempt investigating the relationship between sanctions implications and geographical shift in trading partners. To this end, we analyze separately foreign trade patterns of two countries namely Iran and Russia - which are under imposed sanctions experience - with two United Nations Regional Groups (The Asia-Pacific and the Western European groups)  using a gravity model. The gravity models are estimated over two different time periods: (i) 2006-2015 for Iran and (ii) 2008-2016 for Russia. The main results provide evidence supporting the Asianization and de-Europeanization of Iran and Russia under sanctions which proves the hypothesis of a geographical shift in trading partners under imposing sanctions. However, sanctions have stronger impacts on modifications of Iran’s foreign trade rather than Russian shift in trading partners.

In this paper, the evaluation of the real exchange rate transfer and the asymmetric transmission of real exchange rate fluctuations to the export prices of food products for the country during the period (2001-2015) was studied using two approaches of PMG and GMM systems. The TGARCH method was used to calculate the real exchange rate fluctuation index and the Markov Switching method was used to calculate the positive and negative shocks of the real exchange rate fluctuation.  The results of the study showed that the real exchange rate transfer was full on the export price of food products in the period under review. The real exchange rate fluctuation has increased production costs, thus increasing the export prices of food products. Export prices also react to positive, negative shocks are not the same exchange rate fluctuations, and the effect of negative shocks, exchange rate volatility has been more than positive shocks.

It is commonly held that increasing monetary rewards enhance work effort. This study, however, argues that this will not ineludibly occur in team activities. Incentive Reversal may occur in sequential team productions featuring positive external impacts on agents. This seemingly paradoxical event is explained through two experiments in this article. The first experiment involves a sample of 182 college students who were paired in groups each playing 12 games that led to 2,184 observations. The second experiment involves a sample of 210 college students who were grouped into teams of three that involved 420 observations. The results of both experiments confirmed the occurrence of incentive reversals despite increasing monetary rewards.

Using daily data, this study examined asymmetric pass-through of Iran’s oil price to banking stock index in Tehran Stock Exchange at different time horizons. Based on the results, the coefficient of long-run pass-through of oil price to banking stock index was estimated to be 0.63. Furthermore, based on the short-term ARDL-CECM models, the relationship between the positive components of the banking stock index and those of oil price was estimated, which was significant and equivalent to 0.44. In another model, the influence of negative components of oil price on banking stock index was estimated to be 0.38. Accordingly, by comparing the coefficients of the analyzed components of the oil variables with the corresponding components of the banking stock index, it was found that the value of these two coefficients was different, which is an evidence for an asymmetric relationship between banking stock index and oil price. In the short-term equation (ECM), the ECT value was significant and equivalent to -0.12 confirming the fact that if a shock upsets the long-term balance of the model variables in the short term, the effect of this index will wear off after about 83 periods.

Nowadays, innovation considered as the most important factor, which can affect economic growth extraordinary. Therefore, investigating the effect of variables affecting innovation has priority. In this study, we try to investigate 1) the natural resource curse hypothesis and 2) the effect of institutional quality on the way in which natural resources affects innovation. To investigate these goals, we choose countries that categorized as the efficiency-driven based on the global competitiveness report (2017) during the period 2011-2016 and use GMM estimator to estimate the model. The results show that while the effect of natural resources on innovation is negative in those countries, which confirms the resource curse hypothesis, but the impact of natural resources interaction with institutional quality is positive. These results emphasizing the importance of institutional quality as a groundwork for the way in which other variables can be effective.

The imbalance between water supply and demand in the country has challenged water resource management, especially in the agricultural sector. The virtual water study approach, as an approach that values the use of water inputs in the production and consumption of various commodities, has been established and discussed for almost two decades. Based on this concept, the issue of virtual water trade has become important, and countries are interested in knowing how much water they export or how much they import in the trade of agricultural and industrial goods. In this regard, the international trade in agricultural products and the displacement of water contained in them, known as virtual water exports, can be one of the solutions for water resources management. In this paper, it has been studied the relationship between the country’s virtual water export and water resources inventory of the country for the period of 2006-2013 using the generalized method of moments (GMM) method. Results showed that virtual water exports had a significant positive relationship with the inventory of water resources, GDP, and population.

The main aim of this study is to investigate the impacts of population total, gross domestic product per capita, urbanization rate and energy use on carbon emissions in Nigeria for a period of 1981-2015 using autoregressive distributed lag approach to co-integration (ARDL). The empirical results revealed evidence of a long run relationship among the variables. The generalized ridge regression was used to correct the presence of multicollinearity among the explanatory variables in the long-run. Results show that population total, gross domestic product per capita, urbanization rate and energy use have a positive impact on carbon emissions. Energy use and urbanization both contributed significantly to increasing carbon emissions in the long and short run respectively. Considering the fact that the factors investigated in this study are of the increasing trend in this nation there is a need to implement policies to curb the increasing rate of carbon emissions in Nigeria.

The financial crisis that was started in the last months of 2008, spread out to all world countries in short-term and had broken out as public debt in the European Union and Euro area. Most affected countries from this financial crisis had been Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain were named as PIIGS countries of Europe. The effect of public debt on economic growth had been analyzed for PIIGS countries in this study. First, cross-sectional dependency and homogeneity tests had been performed for variables. The existence of cointegration between series had been analyzed by cointegration test with a multi-structural break is developed by Westerlund (2009). While cross-sectional dependency has been determined for general of the panel at the result of the analysis made, it has been seen that series are not stationary in the level and they become stationary when their first differences are taken. In addition, it had been found that there is cointegration between series at the result of cointegration that considers structural breaks.

The welfare cost of inflation in a new Keynesian model has been studied in this article. Nominal prices and wages are subjected to Rotenberg's adjustments in the benchmark model. In addition, this study uses the CIA model to compare the welfare cost of seigniorage tax and consumption tax. The model is calibrated for the Iranian economy and the results of the calibration are as following: In a steady state, a seigniorage tax imposes higher costs on social welfare rather than consumption taxes. We also find that the welfare cost of inflation increases linearly with the inflation rate and the welfare cost in a model without the government is higher than the model with government expenditures. Numerically, in the benchmark model, an annual inflation rate of 10% entails a welfare cost (relative to a -1.5% annual inflation rate, the Friedman Rule’s level of inflation rate) of 1.69% of a steady state consumption without a government. If we add the government to the model, this cost will be 1.28%. This amount will be only 0.5% if we use the RBC model. According to Ascra's measurement (2009), inflation tax increases welfare costs, but consumption tax decreases welfare costs.

The main objective of the present study was to prioritize the allocation of water resources of Chahnimeh reservoirs from economic, social, and environmental perspectives in 2015-2016 season using fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity of an ideal solution (FTOPSIS) as the branches of fuzzy multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) models. Data were collected from the experts and officials of the relevant organizations by a questionnaire. Nine parameters were used for prioritization and modeling. Results revealed that in FAHP from economic and social perspectives, the agriculture sector had the highest weights of 0.4 and 0.269, respectively. However, the priority to enjoy the water of three Hāmūn lagoons was granted to the environmental sector in environment perspective. FTOPSIS results confirmed the results of FAHP.