نشریه پژوهش های اقتصاد صنعتی
پیاپی 6 (زمستان 1397)

This paper, as an applied research, seeks to measure the economies of scale, in Iran's electricity industry over the period 2007-2009 by separating gas, thermaland combined cycle power plants using the Translog Cost function. The results of this study confirmed the existence of economies of scale for all power plants in Iran's electricity industry. The average return of scale over this period was 1.04. The results of the Morishima elasticity indicate a substitution relationship between the inputs. Tthe values ​​of cross elasticities are positive and greater than one, indicating a strong substitution relationship between the inputs (energy, capital, and labor). Results also indicate that all partial Alan-Ozawa own elasticities are negative as expected.

In this paper, the intersectoral  interactions of   all activities of Iran's economy based on the cumulative Input-Output table of 2011 in 15 sectors has been investigated by using the DANP approach. The results indicate that the "medium-tech industries" has the highest interaction. The "medium- tech industries" has had the highest penetration coefficient or net effect in the intersectoral interactions of the economy, and then the "energy" and "financial intermediary" sectors have had second and third ranks. After the Matrix Algebra calculations based on the DEMATEL and in order to calculate the priority coefficients of each sector, by applying the value-added vector of each sector to the total effects matrix, the super weighted matrix has been exponentiated to a limit. The results of this simulation showed that the highest priority in the Iran’s economy belonged to the "medium-tech industries" with a priority coefficient of 0.245 and "agriculture and fishing" with a priority coefficient of 0.226, respectively.

Electricity distribution and transmission are among the natural monopolies, especially at the local level. This activity is regulated in most countries by the regulatory bodies. Price cap is one of the regulating methods that emphasize the motivation of firms. In the price cap approach, the regulator seeks to provide incentives for increasing the efficiency of firms and power industry. The firm's efficiency and productivity are then measured to determine the target productivity rate to include in the price cap formula. While using the data from 39 Iranian Electricity Distribution Companies for the period 2007-2009, parametric and non-parametric methods were applied to measure the efficiency ratio of the electricity sector in Iran. The results indicate that during the period under review, the efficiency of Iran's electricity distribution was between 0.67 and 0.92. Research findings also show that Tabriz, Tehran, Ahwaz, North Khorasan and Semnan electricity distribution companies have the best performance in terms of efficiency.

Continuous economic growth combined with low inflation is considered one of the indicators of economic stability. Growth of government debt in Iran To the banking system has raised concerns about its impact on economic growth and the ability of the government to meet its commitments in the future. Due to the importance of the issue, this research has examined the impact of government debt thresholds on economic growth in Iran during the period of 1360- 1395. The data of this research have been extracted from the Central Bank Economic. For this purpose, a smooth transfer regression model (STR) has been used and Eviews software has been used for computing. According to the results of the government debt over the past years, the trend has been bullish and the results of the research indicate that the debt up to the threshold of 45. 4% has a positive effect on economic growth. And after that threshold, rising government debt will have a negative impact on economic growth. The results of this study indicate that there is a negative correlation between government debt to the banking system and economic growth and as a result, economic growth has been reduced.

Energy supply is one of the most important areas of economic and social development of each country and always has been raised as a key component of development planning. The demand for Gasoline in the transportation sector also reflects the needs of energy consumers for this system.Thus, Partial Least Squares Regression Technique (PLSR) is used to estimate and speculate Gasoline demand and also to study the degree of variable effects (Gasoline subsidies, gross domestic production(GDP), population as well as the rate of urbanization) in the  transportation sector. The summarized findings suggest that GDP, population, the rate of urbanization and gasoline subsidies have a meaningful and direct effects on Gasoline demand in the transportation sector. From of all, the rate of urbanization has put the most effect while energy subsidies left the least one. The estimation of diesel demand in transportation sector and its anticipation in 2021 indicate that the rate of Gasoline demand  is following an average growth degree of 5/2% annually.

This paper aims to examine the impact of the banks market share and the number of branches on the  selected banks profitability of  Iran. To this end, data  and information of 11 selected banks  during  the period of 2007- 2015 were extracted from the  central bank  database and their balance sheets and the considered model was estimated using panel data method. In this study, two indicators namely the return on equity and return on assets were used as  proxies for profitability variables and hence two separate models were estimated. The  results of models estimation show that the ratio of loans to total assets, number of branches, economic growth and banks market share have positive  and significant impacts on the  banks profitability. The effect of operating costs to total assets on banks profitability was negative and statistically significant at the 5% significance level. Financial leverage has positive impact on the  banks profitability, but it is not  statistically significant at the5%  significance level.