فصلنامه پژوهشهای اقتصادی (رشد و توسعه پایدار)
سال بیستم شماره 2 (تابستان 1399)

The optimization of water use will be an important issue for Iran in the coming years.  In this paper, the gap between current and optimal water use has been estimated using Spatial Durbin Model (SDM), as special case of Spatial Panel Data, for 18 selected provinces during 2003-2015.  Notable characteristic of this model in comparison with other spatial models (including SEM and SAR) is to enter spatial lags of dependent and explanatory variables in the model simultaneously. This model has been selected by Wald Test. Results show that population and income have positive effects on residential water consumption, but water tariff has negative impact on domestic water use. According to the findings, water tariff can be applied as an instrument for controlling the level of water consumption. Especially in high-consumption provinces, water pricing can be more effective in reducing water use.

The water distribution department of urban water and wastewater companies is of natural monopoly characteristic, and requires regulating. The aim of this research is to regulate urban water and wastewater companies in Iran using a price-cap regulation approach to improve their productivity. For this purpose, using the data of municipal water and wastewater companies over the period 2011-2016, the X-factor for the price-cap regulation is calculated using two productivity growth and inefficiency balance scenarios. In this scenario building, the quality of service is included in the calculation of the X factor. Experimental results show that the inclusion of the service quality index in the calculation of X-factor reduces the rate of productivity improvement of the companies. In addition, the more efficient companies have the lower X-factors, and as a result, experience a higher price cap. This reality encourages companies to increase their efficiency and productivity.

This paper studies the short-term impacts of air pollutants on mortality rates in a range of diseases including cardiovascular, respiratory and digestive diseases, tumors and cancers. It uses daily data of suspended particulate matters (SPM), CO, NOx, and O3 in six metropolitan areas of Tehran, Ahvaz, Mashhad, Tabriz, Shiraz, and Esfahan during 2011-2015. In order to determine the impact of air pollution on mortality rate, both daily air pollution and its average over the past two weeks is used. In this research, no association was found between daily pollution and mortality rate. However, the results show that increasing CO in the past two weeks causes a significant increase in mortality rates

This study aims to investigate the percentage of households facing catastrophic health expenditure and the impoverishment index before and after the implementation of the Health System Reform Plan (HSRP) in rural and urban areas of Iran. This research is based on statistical inference, life-cycle theory and pseudo-panel approach, which uses household income-expenditure survey data during 2014-2017. Using the STATA-SE13 and Excel softwares, households were categorized in 10 age groups of households’ heads born between 1944 and 1993 within five-year intervals. The indexes were calculated in weighted and non-weighted cases for total households, and households having health expenditure. After the implementation of HSRP, the percentage of households with catastrophic health expenditure remained relatively unchanged and impoverishment index decreased slightly. In 2015, both rural and urban households having health expenditure in non-weighted case were faced to the least catastrophic expenditure and the least impoverishment index. Totally, rural and urban areas with elderly household-heads experienced the highest catastrophic health expenditure and impoverishment rate.

If the technology gap between counties is narrow, the foreign direct investment (FDI) will have a ‎greater impact on total factor productivity (TFP) because of technological spillovers. In this ‎study, regarding the technology gap, the impact of FDI from nine selected OECD countries on ‎TFPs in eight industrial subsectors of Iran is examined using panel threshold model during ‎‎2002-2015. To estimate this model, at first step, a Cobb-Douglas production function was ‎estimated by ARDL approach, and TFPs were calculated. Then, technology gap as ratio of ‎foreign to domestic TFPs were computed. The estimation of panel threshold ‎model ‎indicated that if technology gap between FDI recipients and donors is narrow, the effect ‎of FDI on TFP will be high in industrial subsectors.  In addition, estimating the coefficients of ‎the variables independent of the regime indicated interesting results contrary to the theoretical ‎expectations about the productivity of the industrial sector. The human capital and R&D ‎expenditure had insignificant coefficients. These findings can be can be justified with the low ‎quality of human capital, inadequate expenditure of industrial sector on R&D activities, and ‎economic sanctions which raise the uncertainty and worsen the stagnation. Upgrading human ‎capital in the industrial sector through on-the-job training, or encouraging workers to participate ‎in overseas training courses are recommend to reduce the technological gap and to improve the attraction of FDI.‎

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the direct effect of foreign investment on economic growth in agriculture, industry and services sectors in the provinces of Iran during the period 2001-2017. For this purpose, the Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) model used. It was found that there is a nonlinear relationship between foreign direct investment and the growth of various economic sectors. The results of this study indicate that foreign direct investment affects differently the growth of various economic sectors due to fluctuations in inflation rates. The estimated coefficients for the inflation rate threshold in three-menthioned sectors were 2.55, 1.78 and 1.94, respectively. In addition, one-percent increase in foreign direct investment would increase the growth rates of agriculture, industry, and service sectors by 0.50%, 0.69% and 0.88%, respectively.

The expansion of underground activities and smuggling of goods threats the employment in Iran. This study estimates the volume of smuggling in Iran by using multiple-cause-multiple causes (MIMIC) model and applying maximum likelihood method over the period 1979-2017. Then the effect of smuggling on employment is investigated by using ARDL Bounding test method. The results of smuggling time series show that despite some fluctuations, the smuggling has been generally increasing. The findings of regression model indicate that expansion of smuggling has a negative impact on employment in the short- and long-run.

The banking industry is an important part of the economies. The health of the banking system as main policy-making channel and the foundation of the economic system is of great importance. This paper examines the impact of administrative corruption on the performance of interest-free Banking in Iran. The statistical sample consists of 21 banks listed in the Iranian stock exchange over the period 2007-2017. In this research, the unbalanced data panel model and the GMM method have been used. The results show that, contrary to the “Greasing the Wheels” view, which considers corruption as an incentive for government employees to perform their duties, administrative corruption does not lead to an increase in net income per unit of bank capital, but it reduces bank profitability (ratio of net profit to total assets). Therefore, corruption in the banking system plays the role of "sand of the wheels". The most important operational solution to combat with administrative corruption in the banking system is to increase the quality and supervision phases of the central bank on the correct implementation of the law, along with increasing fines and public disclosure about offender banks.