پژوهشنامه اقتصادی
پیاپی 74 (پاییز 1398)

The significance of oil market and its impact on economic growth in oil-exporting and oil-consuming countries has led to examination of factors affecting it in different studies. Financial market and its components have penetrated in traditional oil market and this has resulted in creation of exchanges to trade oil-related securities. Therefore, the importance of financial markets has emerged not as an exogenous variable but as an endogenous variable within the oil market. Scientific results of the research demonstrate that the long-term impact of futures markets on the oil market is definite, however during the crises, due to the concerns about complicated crisis conditions, the effective time horizon becomes short-term, and consequently it is the spot market that influences future variables. Therefore, it is suggested that, in order to prevent the impact of global financial crises on the state’s budget, we have to monitor the financial markets and also participate in oil futures market which has the advantage of generating risk coverage and ensuring the country’s budget to become secure against price fluctuations of international markets. Finally, by undertaking a wise strategy of speculation, we can take advantage of potential opportunities, if supported by domestic financial institutions and Ministry of Petroleum and, therefore, earn the country tremendous revenues.

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of trade liberalization on income inequality with consideration of socio-institutional factors emphasized by resistance economy policies in Iran. To meet this end, the Decaluwe et al. (2013) model has been adjusted and it is solved based on Social Accounting Matrix data of year 2011. The results show that in current institutional situation of Iran, the reduction of tariffs in the agriculture, horticulture, forestry and mining sectors can reduce inequality and tariff reduction in sectors of food industry, low technology industries, high technology industries, higher education, transportation and other services will increase inequality in urban and rural areas. By reducing tariff rates in mid-tech industries, inequality in urban and rural areas initially decreases and then increase. Reducing tariffs in oil and gas and healthcare sectors does not affect inequality in urban and rural areas. It is also shown that in the case of implementing resistance economy policies and improving institutional quality, tariff rate reduction in all sectors of production will reduce inequality. Reducing tariff rates in primary and secondary education sectors, housing and other sectors that de not have any link to outside world has no effect on inequality, both in the current institutional situation and in the case of institutional quality improvement as a result of implementing resistance economy policies. Therefore, it is suggested that attention be paid to improvement of institutional quality in the country, along with the implementation of resistance economy policies.

In this study, the effect of socio-economic variables on bread demand has been investigated using AIDS model and micro data. In this model, socio-economic variables such as age, gender and marital status of household breadwinner, his/her own level of education and that of the spouse’s, household size, and employment status and income level of household members have been used. A dummy variable is also used to account for implementation of targeted subsidies law is also used and, in this study, it shows the effects of this policy. To meet this end, the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) is applied. This model has been estimated using the consolidated data and Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) method and the information from more than 165,000 urban households in the country for the years 2007-2015 and for different income groups (low income, medium and wealthy). The results of this research show that, during the period under study, bread was an essential goods for all income groups. The price elasticity of bread demand for all income groups was 0/5. Therefore, bread is an inelastic goods for all income groups. Also, the coefficients related to household size, level of education for the breadwinner and his/her spouse, employment status and marital status of household breadwinner and the dummy variable of targeted subsidies law are positive and significant. The coefficient related to the age of household breadwinner for poor and middle-income households has been estimated to be positive and for wealthy households it has not been found to be significant .The coefficient belonging to the gender of the head of household for poor households has been estimated to be insignificant and for middle-income and wealthy households it has been estimated to be positive and significant.

The purpose of this paper is identifying speculative rational bubbles and applying early warning indices to illustrate these bubbles in USD/IRR informal exchange rate during volatile period of March 2011 to September 2018. The deviation of the exchange rate from fundamental values which is known as bubble may occur as a result of a speculative attack to the value of local currency which, if the authorities do not defend the value of the national currency, will lead to a currency crisis. Therefore, it is very important for policy-makers to correctly identify bubble periods to intervene timely in the foreign exchange market and to prevent deviation of exchange rate from its fundamental value. For this purpose, rational speculative bubbles modeling using Markov regime-switching model with time-varying probabilities including dormant, collapsing and explosive regimes with high ability in identifying the time of formation and collapsing of bubbles has been done. In our model, the sanction index and changes in foreign exchange reserves are early warning indicators. The sanction index is the cause of speculative demand in the informal foreign exchange market over the period covered by this study which, coupled with central bank interventions to reduce the pressure on the foreign exchange market, have been able to explain recent currency speculative bubbles. Our results confirm that rational speculative bubbles exist in USD/IRR informal exchange rate. Based on our results, time intervals identified as explosive regime are exactly contemporaneous with currency crisis periods. On the other hand, collapsing regimes tend to coincide with post-crisis periods. Dormant regimes identified in this study correspond to periods that the exchange rate return has a mild increasing trend. Comparing designed model to other specifications display sufficient robustness in the presented model.

The widespread concern about financing higher education in different countries has led to a lot of movements. Policymakers have started to take advantage of this trend, and the universities themselves have come up with new insights into this new situation. The purpose of this study is to develop a suitable model for financing higher education in Iran, which is done by a combined research method. In the qualitative stage, after the interview and coding steps, the conceptual model was depicted based on systematic approach of Strauss and Corbin. In the quantitative stage, 155 people were questioned as a tool for evaluating the model. In order to test the questionnaire, factor analysis, Cronbach's alpha, combined reliability and convergent validity methods were used, which showed that the results were acceptable and most of the cases had a suitable factor load. In the next step, the coefficients of significance between variables and standardized coefficients of the paths related to the hypotheses were calculated. Among the research hypotheses, there was a significant relationship between the model's pivotal phenomenon, which was the internalized diversification of funding, with academic independence and naturalness, but its significant relation with fair access to higher education and the reliability on financial resources was rejected. Also, there was a significant relationship between internal financing diversification with information, equipment, capabilities and experiences networking strategies, financial, mental and spiritual motivation, strengthening of stakeholder communication, development of required rules and regulations were approved, but were rejected by increasing international engagement and cooperation.

The purpose of this article is to evaluate factors affecting expansion of e-commerce in Iran in a provincial level using panel-data regression model for period 2013 to 2016 in 30 Iranian provinces. The results show that about 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in Iran has been created by e-commerce. The most important factors affecting expansion of e-commerce include: number of e-commerce businesses, penetration rate of landline phone, penetration rate of mobile phone and internet bandwidth. The estimated coefficient for variables of the number of e-commerce businesses, penetration rate of landline phone, penetration rate of mobile phone and internet penetration rate are 0.045, 0.022, 0.009 and 0.006 respectively and they are statistically significant. The results show the greatest influence on e-commerce is made by "internet penetration rate" that can be used as the driving engine of e-commerce. This means that with increasing internet penetration rate in Iranian provinces, the gap in e-commerce between provinces can be decreased. The second influential variable on expansion of e-commerce is "number of e-commerce businesses". In addition, penetration rates of mobile and landline phone are other variables influencing expansion of e-commerce in Iran.