مجله سیاست گذاری اقتصادی
سال سیزدهم شماره 25 (بهار و تابستان 1400)

Energy is one of the most important production factors. Before the implementation of the plan for energy subsidy removal in Iran, the largest share of the subsidized energy resources was allocated to the transportation sector. This sector was the most important energy-intensive sector. The largest amount of energy subsidies in this sector was allocated to gasoline. After an increase in the price of energy, a reduction in energy consumption was expected through improving the efficiency of production sectors and consumption methods. However, after the energy subsidy removal, little change occurred in the energy consumption by economic sectors. The healthcare sector, as a very important sector, has always been influenced by various economic shocks, including energy sector shocks. The energy-intensive activities of hospitals and other health care centers, in addition to increasing energy prices, had great impacts. Therefore, studying the impacts of the policy for energy subsidy removal on healthcare sectors seems necessary.

This study uses the Structural Path Analysis (SPA) approach. to explore the impacts of removing gasoline subsidy on the producer price index of private and public healthcare sectors. The SPA approach explores the direct and indirect effects of a unit of increase in an exogenous account on the cost index of endogenous accounts. Additionally, it identifies the structural paths. In order to investigate the effects of the subsidy removal plan on the producer price index of healthcare sectors and analyze the structural paths, an energy SAM in the healthcare sectors is required. This study uses the energy SAM of 2006, where the healthcare sectors are integrated into the other service sectors. Therefore, healthcare sectors are extracted from the other service sectors based on their ratios in the input-output table of 2001. In order to explore the structural path, the SIMSIP SAM software of the World Bank is used.

The results indicate that a 269-percent increase in the gasoline price has led to 8.95 and 7.79 percent increases in the producer price indices of the public and private healthcare sectors, respectively. The largest total effect of one-unit reduction in the gasoline subsidy has been 9.04, which relates to the other public healthcare activities. Overall, the direct effect of reduction in the gasoline subsidy is rather small, and more impression is transferred through "indirect paths".Gasoline subsidy removal has had the largest effects on the transportation and post sector, the producer price index of which has increased for 18.19 percent. As a result, households have had to pay higher prices, which has caused an increase in the cost of the living index of households (especially urban households, due to the use of various means of transportation). Households provide the labor of the economy and are the owners of the capital. To keep their welfare level (using the previous portfolio), they ask higher wages and salaries (i.e., increase in the factor of production index). Then, the cost of production activities, including public and private health activities, increases. This cycle is repeated. Changing in the energy subsidy creates a cycle, which affects different components of the economy. Parts of the cycle can be seen in indirect paths.

This study shows that the implementation of the price policy of gasoline subsidy removal has led to an increase in the producer price index of the private and public healthcare sectors through various socio-economic paths. As observed, a unit of reduction in the gasoline subsidy has the largest overall effect on the other public healthcare activities (0.0167). Two main paths, including "Gasoline, Urban Household, Enterprises, Operational Surplus, Other Public Healthcare Activities", and "Gasoline, Transportation and Post, Urban Household, Urban Labor Income, Other Public Healthcare Activities" have the largest price coefficients in the price transfer from gasoline to the other public healthcare sectors. Therefore, an increase in the price of gasoline had led to an increase in the cost of living index and the factor of production index, and it reaches the healthcare sector. It has also affected the transportation and the post price index. It is suggested that the ministry of health try to adjust the effects of the economic shocks, especially about the public healthcare sector due to its larger coefficients.Additionally, the importance of healthcare sector products is obvious for all, due to the growing need for health services in the community. Nowadays, the trend of diseases has changed to non-communicable diseases. Frequent doctor visits and the use of expensive medications sometimes for the life time of an individual may be experienced in the case of various chronic diseases. Many people are unable to afford the high cost of health services and may not continue their treatment if there is any increase in the price of health services. Therefore, it is necessary to pay special attention to the effects of policies on the healthcare sectors and to find solutions for any negative impression in the society.

The determinants of the current account balance are among the most important issues in open economies. Identifying the determinants of this balance in the short and long runs is of importance for policy makers. The function of the current account balance involves important information about an economy’s performance. It also provides valuable macroeconomic policy recommendations. There are several theoretical models existing in the literature to explain the behavior of the current account balance. Each of them makes different predictions about the elements determining the balance as well as the sign and magnitude of the relationships between the current account fluctuation and its determinants. First, its significance stems from the fact that the current account balance, reflecting the saving-investment ratio, is closely related to the status of the fiscal balance and private savings which are the key factors of economic growth. Second, a country’s balance on the current account is the difference between its exports and imports, reflecting the totality of domestic residents’ transactions with foreigners in markets of goods and services. Third, since the current account balance determines the evolution of a country’s stock of net claims on the rest of the world over time, it reflects the intertemporal decisions of (domestic and foreign) residents. Consequently, policymakers try to explain current account balance movements, assess their sustainable levels and induce changes to the balance through proper measures.

In the present paper, we examine the determinants of the current account balance in Iran based on a cointegration approach and a vector error correction model using seasonal data for 1981-2016. It is also estimated for the selected Asian countries. The initial aim of the empirical research is to identify the main (short- and long-term) determinants of the current account deficits. Following previous theoretical and empirical studies, we estimate a model. The objective of this paper is to examine both the long-run and short-run impacts of the initial stock of net foreign assets, degree of openness to international trade, real exchange rate and relative income on the current accounts for eight selected emerging Asian economies since the 1980s. Four sample economies are Iran, China, India and Korea. Based on the preliminary analysis of the data presented in the last section, all the variables in this study are non-stationary and follow a process. As a general rule, non-stationary time series should not be used in regression models in order to avoid the problem of spurious regression. However, Engle and Granger (1987) pointed out that a linear combination of two or more non-stationary series may be stationary. If such a stationary linear combination does exist, the non-stationary time series are said to be co-integrated, and the stationary linear combination can be interpreted as a long-run equilibrium relationship among the variables.Given the above considerations, we used the co-integration test proposed by Johansen and Juselius (1990), which is a vector-based autoregressive approach, to examine the underlying co-integrating relationships among the variables specified. Given the non-stationary nature of the data used in this study, this paper adopts a co-integrated VAR approach to analyze current account balances and a set of macroeconomics determinants. Johansen and Juselius’ (ibid) co-integration test is first applied to detect the co-integration between current account balances and potential explanatory variables within a VAR framework. In the presence of co-integration, the long-run impacts of all the explanatory variables of current accounts are analyzed based on the estimated co-integrating parameters, while the short-run impacts of all the explanatory variables of the current account are investigated according to the estimation of the vector error correction model (VECM). Compared with a single-equation residual-based approach, Johansen and Juselius’s test is superior in two main aspects. First, all the variables in the VAR system are assumed to be endogenous in the Johansen and Juselius’s test, even if some of them do not serve as dependent variables. As a result, it avoids the problem of normalizing the co-integrating vector on one of the variables or of imposing a unique co-integrating vector, as in the single-equation residual-based test (for example, the 2-step co-integration test by Engle-Granger, 1987). Second, Johansen and Juselius’s approach can address the multi-co-integration problem when there are more than two variables involved in the test, whereas a single-equation residual-based test is only able to find one co-integrating relationship despite the number of variables involved in the test. This second advantage of Johansen and Juselius’s test is especially important to this study given that there are five variables involved in the analysis of current account behavior. The power of Johansen and Juselius’ test is greater than that of the EG test. For all these reasons, this study applies Johansen and Juselius’ test to explore the co-integrating relationship(s) between the current account balance and the explanatory variables.

The results indicate a long-term equilibrium relationship between the current account balance and such determinants as net foreign asset variables, the degree of openness of the economy, and internal production. In the short run, in addition to the mentioned variables, the effective real exchange rate has a weak effect on the current account balance of the sample countries.

Since several studies have highlighted the part played by large current account deficits in the run-up to financial crisis episodes, a considerable body of research has been done on current account determinants recently. Although the selected Asian countries have been facing turbulent current account dynamics over the past three decades, they have not been the subject of enough empirical studies. In this respect, the current paper seeks to fill in this gap in the empirical literature by assessing a wide range of (short- and long-term) determinants of the current account balance as suggested by the (theoretical and empirical) literature. The empirical results are in ways consistent with previous theoretical and empirical studies.

The challenge of employment is not only one of the most important social issues in the country today but also, considering the rate of population growth in the last two decades, the most important socio-economic challenge of the next few decades. The immediate consequences of this crisis are the spread of poverty and the increase of other personal and social harms, which naturally endanger social stability and cohesion. On the other hand, it is clear to everyone that the process of growth and development has various social, cultural, environmental, geographical, economic and political dimensions. In thisregard, the employment of the labor force has required that the factors affecting employment be considered. Among these, the industrial, agricultural and service sectors are the most important economic sectors that play significant roles in creating employment, which have inevitably been affected by economic sanctions. Unilateral and multilateral economic sanctions imposed on the country by various organizations and countries have disturbed the balance of the labor market. Therefore, providing a clear picture of the current situation in the economy, especially in the field of labor market, and the timely analysis of these developments have important effects on the quality of economic policies, specifically for the labor market and the other related sectors and markets.
Considering the importance of employment in the progress of the country, this study examines the factors affecting the employment in industry, agriculture and services during the period of 2016-2018. In order to investigate the effect of economic sanctions in the first step of the present study, an attempt was made to use a new indicator to measure sanctions in economic modeling. For this purpose, a series of factor analyses were done, and eleven variables that had high impacts of sanctions were used in the sanctions indexing process. The variables affected by sanctions referred to those that were in the first layer of the economic sanctions on the country. In other words, these variables were highly sensitive to the imposition of international economic sanctions. They were often considered as the main impacts of sanctions on the key variables of the country's economy. For this purpose, after the variables affected by the embargo were introduced and the related descriptive statistics were done, the factor analysis followed through a few steps including a) selection of appropriate variables, b) initial extraction of factors, c) final extraction of the factors by factor rotation, and d) scale construction and naming the agents. Furthermore, considering that the effects of economic sanctions on the level of employment are indirect and through the production channel, a system of simultaneous equations was used to estimate the impact of economic sanctions on employment. In order to achieve the goal of research, two different models that showed the direct role of economic sanctions on economic growth and their indirect effect on employment were extracted from the production channel in the three sectors of industry, agriculture and services.
 The variables were estimated according to the special conditions of the system of equations. For this purpose, first the system of equations and the model variables were introduced, and then the tests of significance, synchronicity, diagonality and diagnostic problem were performed to estimate the system of equations. According to the results of these tests, an appropriate method for the system of simultaneous equations was selected from the methods of OLS, 2SLS, 3SLS and SUR. According to the test results, the system of equations related to industry and services should be estimated as 3SLS and the system of equations related to agriculture as 2SLS. In the three-stage least squares (3SLS) method, the relationships among the equation disturbance sentences in a system are taken into consideration. In the two-stage least squares (2SLS) method, however, the relationships are not considered and only endogenousness is discussed.
The results show that the impacts of sanctions on the employment in the three sectors of industry, agriculture and services are not the same and economic sanctions have significantly reduced the employment in industry and services. The imposition of sanctions on the industrial sector and the reduction of industrial growth can subsequently have a reducing effect on the growth of the service sector. The results also indicate a positive and significant effect of economic sanctions on the employment in the agricultural sector during the research period. In fact, the agricultural and food industries suffer less from economic sanctions due to their indigenous nature and low dependence on foreign countries.

Banks, as the center of financial and payment systems, play a pivotal role in providing the resources needed for economic sectors by attracting and allocating resources in the economy. Therefore, the efficiency of the banking sector is considered as a key factor in economic growth. In addition, due to the banking-centric nature of the financing system in Iran, banks provide a significant part of the need for financial resources of manufacturing companies. So, shocks in financial markets affect the performance of firms by affecting the resources available to firms and, consequently, their financial expenditures, thereby affecting the real sector of the economy. The performance of banks is, in turn, influenced by the macroeconomic environment and the decisions of the central bank as a monetary policy maker. Therefore, it is very important to study the effects of the central bank policies and the change in the behavior of banks as financial intermediaries on different sectors of the economy. The purpose of this article is to investigate the effect of central bank policies on macroeconomic variables with an emphasis on the behavior of banks as the main suppliers of capital and liquidity for the manufacturing sector.

In this article, the economic conditions of Iran are simulated in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model using seasonal information from 1989 to 2018, and the effects of monetary, credit and real shocks on the country's economy are analyzed. The model used for this purpose covers four parts including production sector, household sector, bank sector and central bank and government sector. At the beginning of the period, the household is the supplier of labor and keeps its resources either as a deposit with the bank or as cash. The production sector consists of three parts including the entrepreneur, the producer of capital goods and the producer of the final goods (firm). The entrepreneur is the supplier of capital, and the producer of capital uses the capital purchased from the entrepreneur and his own capital to generate new capital and, again at the end of the period, to sell the new produced capital to the entrepreneur. In this model, banks use household deposits to provide facilities to enterprises; this loan is used to produce goods. So, the bank's major task is to provide working capital for the production units and the resources required by the entrepreneur at the interest rates which are determined in advance. According to the macroeconomic conditions of Iran, these interest rates are determined by the Monetary and Credit Council in an orderly manner and target the tools of the central bank. An important point about the assumptions of this model is that, unlike most similar studies, the entrepreneur who receives the credits from banks may go bankrupt and be unable to repay the received money. This assumption is taken into account in the model, as observed in Iran’s economy. In this study, in order to design the model, the research works of Bernanke et al. (1999), Smith et al. (2007) and Boys and Zhou (2016) have been used.

Based on the results obtained from the model, the occurrence of a negative credit shock will reduce production, consumption and investment. It can also increase the interest rate on credits, raise the inflation and reduce working hours. Moreover, in case of contractionary monetary policies, production, consumption, investment, the number of working hours of the labor force and inflation can decrease while the interest on credits increases. The remarkable result about the implementation of contractionary monetary policies is that, after the implementation of this policy, the amount of credits granted by banks experiences fluctuations; it decreases at first, then increases again over a period of time, and then the effects of the shock gradually disappear.

According to the results of the model, a contractionary policy in the form of reducing the amount of credits not only has a negative effect on production and consumption but also increases inflation. In other words, reduction of the level of aggregate demand as a result of a reduction in credits does not lead to the control of inflation. This is due to the high dependence of Iran's economy on bank credit financing. Therefore, it is suggested that the central bank not control macroeconomic variables by controlling banks' interest rates and loans, because it will not have desirable results. Instead, it is recommended that the central bank direct macroeconomic variables by controlling the policy rate in the interbank market and changing the volume of bank reserves.

Iran is located in the arid and semi-arid region of the world and is facing a severe water shortage. The share of industries and mines in the total amount of water consumption in this country is about two percent, which is very small as compared to developed countries. However, the geographical distribution and location of industries and mines are not been water-centered, and this has led to many obstacles in providing water resources for industry and mining, despite the low share of this sector compared to the global average. For example, an important part of Iran's mines such as iron and copper mines are located in low-water provinces such as Hormozgan, Kerman and Yazd. But there are two main strategies for managing water resources in industry and mining. The first option is to use saltwater instead of fresh water (desalted seawater), and the second option is to use water recycling processes. In recent years, the high share of the current budget in the country's public budget has made the government unable to complete the construction and operation of infrastructures in various areas, including the water industry. Moreover, despite the sanctions on the Iranian oil industry and the limited foreign exchange earnings, the possibility of financing such projects with the revenues from oil sale has decreased, and the government must inevitably rely on the revenues from taxes, service tariffs, the issuance of government bonds, or the capacity of the private sector. Of course, various methods of financing infrastructure projects sometimes have different effects on the economy. Therefore, it is necessary to study the effect of constructing these infrastructures on the economy according to the way of financing them. This paper aims to provide a dynamic financial computable general equilibrium model that can evaluate the public-private partnership by focusing on the water sector, the effects of building, financing and operating desalination centers and transferring the Persian Gulf water to the mines sector in the southeast of the country.

In order to investigate the trend of changes in the variables of this model, a recursive financial computable general equilibrium is used. After the model is specified, three different scenarios are simulated using the MCP technique and the GAMS software. In all these scenarios, it is assumed that the project will be built for seven years and operated for 15 years. The construction of this project has led to an increase in the supply of unconventional water to the mining sector by 650 million cubic meters. But the financing methods of the project are assumed to be different in these scenarios. In the first scenario, financing is done by the issuing of government bonds, in the second scenario, by the imposing of a tax on the water product, and, in the third scenario, by the issuing of equities and eliminating of water subsidies (in terms of the productivity index).

The results of simulations show that the project, if implemented by the private sector and financed by eliminating water subsidies and issuing equities in the capital market for the building and operation period, will have higher positive effects on the gross domestic production and social welfare than when it is implemented by the public sector and financed by issuing bonds or imposing a tax on water products. In other words, the building and operation of the project by the private sector by the elimination of water subsidies and the issuance of equities in the capital market without increasing productivity will lead to an increase of 0.0224% in the GDP, but it will not make a significant change in the household welfare. If an increase in productivity accompanies it, the GDP will increase by 0.0751 percent and social welfare by 0.0016 percent. On the other hand, if building and operating are done by the public sector and by the issuing of bonds, it will increase the GDP by 0.0175 percent and reduce the household welfare by 0.002 percent. If it is financed by imposing a tax on water products, the GDP will increase by 0.0108 percent, and household social welfare will decrease by 0.0004 percent.

The results show that the building and operation of the project in any way leads to an increase in the GDP. However, the GDP in the public-private partnership method increases more than in the other methods when productivity increases during the operation period (the second case of the third scenario). In the traditional method, if the project is financed by the issuance of government bonds, the increase in the GDP will be greater than that when the project is financed by tax revenues. Also, the change in the household welfare is negative in the first and the second scenarios, where the project is traditionally implemented by the government. In the third scenario, however, where the project is implemented using a public-private partnership contract, the productivity is zero when it is unchanged, but it is positive when it increases in the period of operation.

The corona virus was detected in Iran in the winter of 2019. Since then, certain decisions have been made such as keeping social distance, reducing traffic, closing schools, reducing office hours and locking jobs down such as restaurants, stadiums and other high-risk jobs. All these have led to a decrease in production and employment in Iran. But, this effect has been different in different economic sectors. The industry sector is affected by the corona virus, with the intensification of arrears of production units (such as bank debts, social security insurance and taxes), contract problems of project-oriented companies in epidemic conditions, ‌ reduced access to export markets, and reduced production due to reduced imports of required intermediaries. The agricultural sector is also affected in the supply chain, demand and liquidity, firms, supply of labor, consumption of goods and services, and especially income of consumers and producers of agricultural products. In the short and long terms, on the household economies are and will be affected. In the service sector, the jobs that are most likely to spread the disease, such as transportation, restaurants and hotels and clothing, face a decrease in employment and income. Therefore, it is important is to measure the intensity and extent of the corona effect on different economic sectors separately.

The framework in this study is based on the New Keynesian standard model and according to the studies of Toda (2020), Pochum et al. (2020), Bartik et al. (2020), Mensa et al. (2008), and Agnor et al. (2012) adjusted to expand to the corona shock. The model consists of five sections: households, enterprises, government, oil and monetary affairs. According to the purpose of this article, which examines the vulnerability of different economic sectors versus the outbreak of coronavirus, three economic sectors including agriculture, industry and services are explored. In this article, to design a household sector, the standard DSGE model has been used. Then, using the SIR model such as Toda study (2020), labor force is divided into three groups including susceptible, infected and recovered people. A shock is considered for the corona virus, and its effect on production cost is investigated.

The analysis of corona disease shock on consumption and employment in different economic sectors indicates that employment in the agricultural sector is increasing, but it is declining in industry and services. At the same time, the decrease in employment in the service sector is more than that in the industrial sector. Despite the corona shock, the consumption of agricultural goods has decreased, but the consumption of industrial goods and services has risen, and the consumption of service goods has increased more than the goods of industry. The study of corona shock on investment and production indicates that investment in the agricultural sector is increasing, but it is declining in industry and services. The decline of the investment in industry is greater than that in services. The study of these effects on the production of various economic sectors also shows that production has increased in the agricultural sector but has decreases in the industrial and service sectors. The decline of production in the industrial sector is more than that in the service sector. With a positive oil revenue shock, consumption and employment in various sectors of the economy has increased, but it is less than before the corona virus spread. Consumption in the industrial sector is also increasing more than in the other two sectors. However, employment in the service sector has increased more than in the other sectors due to the corona shock, and its decrease is more than that in the other sectors. A positive oil revenue shock without a corona shock will lead to lower prices in various sectors of the economy, improved investment, reduced production costs and improved production, but the combination of this shock with the negative shock of the corona virus reduces the positive effects.

The results of the study indicate an increase in prices and production costs and a decrease in production, employment, investment and consumption. The study of the effect of corona shock on various economic sectors shows that, although production, investment and consumption in the industrial and service sectors are declining, these variables are improving in the agricultural sector. In addition, the rate of decrease in production, investment and consumption in the industrial sector is more than that in the other sectors. The study of the effect of positive oil revenue shock shows that, in the absence of corona virus shock, positive oil revenue shock would lead to lower prices, wages and production costs in various economic sectors. It would also lead to increased investment and production in different economic sectors. However, a combination of this shock and the negative shock of the corona virus has reduced its positive effects. Prices and production costs have increased in various economic sectors due to the reduction of investment, production, consumption and employment. At the same time, these negative effects on the industrial sector will be even more on the sectors of services and agriculture. Corona shock on different sectors of the economy, which coincided with the conditions of sanctions, has intensified the economic recession. It is, thus, recommended to accurately measure the adverse effects based on the field of activity in different sectors of the economy. Then, according to the amount of damage inflicted on different sectors of the economy, support packages such as tax reduction or exemption and increase subsidies should be taken into account. Appropriate policies are also needed to strengthen investment in various sectors of the economy. This requires stability in monetary and fiscal policies. Credit protection policies such as offering low-cost facilities, either with long-term repayments or with delays, should be considered by policymakers. Given the current situation, it is better to reinforce electronic services.

In recent years, the use of financial sanctions has been unprecedented. Financial sanctions aim to exert economic pressure in order to change the political behavior and the performance of governments under sanction. The economic sanctions were imposed on Iran's economy in 2006, and further restrictions were put on Iran's access to the financial network of the United States. The financial sanctions were intensified in 2011 under the pretext of nuclear and human rights issues. Sanctions also reduced the share of capital expenditures in the budget and the government expenditures for safety net. When the government faced a budget deficit and the imports became more expensive, the resulting inflation increased the cost of living for the low-income groups. Therefore, financial sanctions adversely affected the poor due to the disruption of financial flows. Generally, during sanctions, the government budget deficit can deteriorate income inequality. Sanctions can not only block the financial transactions of a country and deter investments but also pose trade barriers; it leads to increased challenges in paying for exports and imports. Financial sanctions also affect imports because they impede the transfer of money, which leads to a shortage of one or more goods. In these circumstances, the sanctioned country tries to replace the import of goods from other countries in order to circumvent the sanctions; But this also causes a shortage of goods and increases their prices. Thus, economic sanctions reduce the supply of necessary goods. Rising prices, especially commodity and food prices, in turn, can increase inequality. Sanctions reduce the import of health and pharmaceutical products, and, as a result, citizens' access to these goods is reduced; most of all, the vulnerable segments of the population are affected, especially women, children and the elderly people. Sanctions on imports through capital goods and intermediaries reduce domestic production, employment and income, which leads to an increase in absolute poverty and a reduction in exports of labor-intensive goods. This, in turn, reduces the level of income and employment in the target country and leads to increased inequality. In Iran, the decline in non-oil exports happened by the above-mentioned mechanism. in addition to it, there occurred reductions in oil exports and the government foreign exchange revenues. Sanctions have strong effects on economic aspects, including reduced government investment, depreciated exchange rates, declined government spending and possibly reduced safety net payments. These changes can increase inequality.

We examined the impact of financial sanctions on income inequality in Iran over the period of 1991-2017. To this end, we used a Factor Augmented Vector Auto-Regression (FAVAR) model with time varying parameters (TVP). We utilized MATLAB 2016 to estimate the econometric model. FAVAR models with time-varying parameters provide an estimate of the financial sanctions proxy variable (oil revenues) and then indicate the response functions in the foreign debts of the central bank, liquidity, economic growth, informal exchange rates, inflation and unemployment.

Iran's economy has been exposed to economic shocks emanating from financial sanctions and represented by a proxy that shows the oil revenues fluctuation. A corresponding model was used to provide an analysis of the impacts of the financial sanctions on the Gini coefficient. Over time, due to the changes in the coefficients of the variables in the FAVAR structural model, it was possible to analyze the effects of the shock on the economic conditions using time-varying parameters (TVPs).

Nonlinear behavior indicates the effectiveness of variables on the Gini coefficient. Thus, economic growth improves the Gini coefficient over time, but the other variables adversely affect it. Given that the financial sanctions adversely affected the inflation rate, exchange rate and unemployment as well as increased the foreign debts of the central bank, it can be concluded that the sanctions aggravated the Gini coefficient and increased income inequality. In fact, the increasing financial sanctions prevented the transfer of oil revenues and the import of staple goods. It also raised the inflation rate which led to the higher inequality of income distribution. Therefore, the sanctions adversely affected the Gini coefficient and inequality in Iran.

Monetary variables serve as the main conditions for economic stability. In the economy of Iran, liquidity has tremendously grown in recent years and, by affecting the exchange rate as an important macroeconomic variable, has led to its volatility. Therefore, identifying the relationship between liquidity and exchange rate volatility is of great importance from the perspective of economic policymakers in order to make decisions in macroplans. This study analyzes the dynamic response of nominal exchange rate volatility in different states of liquidity growth in the Iranian economy.

At first, using the statistics of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the quarterly data were extracted of the nominal exchange rate, liquidity, export price index, and import price index for the period of 1990-2019.Then, the liquidity growth variable was calculated through the logarithmic difference of that variable. Also, with regard to the terms of trade from the ratio of export price index to import price index, the nominal exchange rate volatility was calculated by using MS-EGARCH (1,1), MS-TGARCH (1,1) and MS-GJRGARCH(1,1) with the norms of std, ged, sstd, and sged conditional distributions. The results indicated that the MS-EGARCH (1,1) model with the sstd conditional distribution and the lowest value of Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) is the optimal model for calculating nominal exchange rate volatility; Then, the stationary of liquidity growth, terms of trade and nominal exchange rate volatility were confirmed by using Lee and Strazicich test (2003) with two structural breaks. Using the linear vector autoregressive model, the optimal interval length of the model was found to be 4. According to test conducted by Hansen (1999), the number of regimes turned to be 2. As a result, the threshold vector autoregressive model (TVAR) with two regimes was used to investigate the effect of the liquidity growth and terms of trade on the nominal exchange rate volatility.

Considering the nominal exchange rate volatility as a threshold variable with the value of 12.57, the results indicate that, in the low regime of the nominal exchange rate volatility, lagged liquidity growth does not have a significant effect on the nominal exchange rate volatility. However, by exceeding the threshold and being in the high regime of nominal exchange rate volatility, the lagged liquidity growth have positive and significant effect on nominal exchange rate volatility, because the growth of liquidity as an expansionary monetary policy leads to growth in demand for goods and services. Because the supply of goods and services is limited in the short time, this leads to inflation and the exchange rate volatility increases. Also, the terms of trade reduce the nominal exchange rate volatility in the high regime, which is consistent with the findings of Chipili (2012). In addition, in order to explain the dynamics of liquidity growth and nominal exchange rate volatility, the Markov Switching Vector Autoregressive (MSVAR) model was used. The results show that, in the equations of the nominal exchange rate volatility and liquidity growth, the autoregressive coefficients are significant in both regimes. The results of Granger causality test based on MSVAR equations indicate that, in the low regime of the nominal exchange rate volatility, liquidity growth is not the Granger cause of this volatility, while liquidity growth is the Granger cause in the high regime. The terms of trade are also the Granger cause of the nominal exchange rate volatility in the high regime. According to the results of the study, in the high regime, the growth of liquidity and terms of trade are effective in the volatility.

If the liquidity is directed to production according to the quantity theory of money, the volume of production increases and part of the liquidity effect will be neutralized. Otherwise, speculators and traders in the market assets such as gold, currency and housing will increase the price of these assets as well as inflation and exchange rate volatility in the country; Also, if the government adjusts its budget deficit through supply-side policies instead of borrowing from the central bank, it will reduce the turbulence in the exchange market by reducing the amount of liquidity. The terms of trade can be improved by factors such as exporting goods to countries with low elasticity demand, maintaining the monopoly status of the country's exports, supporting of exporters, and decreasing share of oil in the country's exports, Therefore, if the liquidity growth is controlled and the terms of trade are improved, the nominal exchange rate volatility decreases, which policymakers consider as a strategic point.

In order to achieve sustainable development, it is necessary to actively manage the increasing consumption of water resources. In this regard, from the economic point of view, possible policies for water crisis management are presented in the form of increasing the supply and controlling the demand. For Iran, policy-makers have focused more on the supply side and the production of water and less on the demand management. This study attempts to design a model for the behavioral characteristics of residential water consumers in terms of their social interactions (i.e., the effect of social networks on the consumption behavior) and to simulate the actual water demand in Shiraz City.

Description of the base model: Two types of consumption behaviors, cooperative (C) or non-cooperative (NC), have been considered for residential water consumers. Using the individual's social environment, economic and climatic variables (such as temperature) and the diffusion process model, the tendency to one of these two behaviors is determined. There is an optimal social consumption for each household according to its social environment. Depending on the type of the behavior and the optimal consumption, the household adjusts its demand in the next period. To determine the agent’s water consumption behavior according to the corresponding social network, the following utility functions are formulated: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) These equations illustrate the utility of maintaining or changing household’s behavior. In these equations, a, b, are the parameters of the model. and are the proportion of neighbors of agent i with the behavior of C and NC, respectively, indicating the effect of a neighbors’ behavior on the behavior of an agent. The first right-hand part of the above equations represents the social pressure. The modification factor ( ) is the effect of the other factors on the household’s choice of behavior and measures the pressure to have behavior C. Optimal water consumption affected by social network: When there are V neighbors, the optimal consumption is obtained by solving the following minimization problem: (6) : Neighbor’s water consumption per capita : Household’s income : Neighbor’s income : Weight coefficient. Household’s water consumption adjustment: The model assumes that agents compensate for a percentage of the gap between their consumption and their optimal water consumption in each period, according to the utility that they obtain from their social network. This study is based on the data from 1000 household water users in the residential areas of Shiraz. In each residential cell of 300 × 300 square meters in the city, a household is selected to represent all the consumers in that geography. The present study minimizes the root mean square error (RMSE) between two sets of simulation data and real data, as a criterion for calibration. The data from 2005 to 2016 are used for the calibration process, and the data from 2017 to 2019 are used to validate the model.

Advertisement scenarios: Simulated advertising scenarios show 10, 20, and 30 percent of increase in advertising expenditures to encourage consumers to behave cooperatively. In 2032, the rate of reduction in per capita consumption, compared to 2019 and according to each scenario, will be 400, 950 and 1270 liters, respectively. The difference from the baseline scenario is more than these values. Also, the percentage of the people with cooperative behavior in the system will improve and reach 61, 73 and 81%, respectively. Scenarios of coercive behavior: The coercion scenario includes situations in which the government can, by legal or technical requirements, force households with per capita consumption more than 54 or 55 cubic meters, or only non-cooperative households with the consumption more than 54 or 55 cubic meters, to cooperate. In these scenarios, the order of the best results obtained to reduce consumption is as follows: A- Forcing consumers with non-cooperative behaviour and consumption above 54 cubic meters B- Forcing consumers with consumption above 54 cubic meters C- Forcing consumers with non-cooperative behaviour and consumption above 55 cubic meters D- Forcing consumers with consumption above 55 cubic meters

The results show that an increase in advertisement can improve the percentage of people with cooperative behavior to reduce consumption. Also, in the case of forcing consumers to adopt saving behavior, it is not necessary to force all the consumers (above a certain threshold of consumption), but it is better to force only those with non-cooperative behavior (and with consumption above a certain threshold). Following the behavior of a neighborhood network will distribute the cooperative behavior throughout the system and, therefore, cause proper saving in the total water consumption.

Economic growth and development require greater use of human, physical, and natural resources to increase production and per-capita income. In fact, environmental degradation has been the primary product of man’s efforts to secure improved standards of living for the growing number of people. The extent of environmental degradation is linked to human population size and the quantity of natural resources available per person. Rapid population growth, intensification of agriculture, uncontrolled growth of urbanization, and industrialization play important roles in resource depletion, waste production and environmental degradation. The increasing population and growing affluence have resulted in rapid growth of energy production and consumption and, thus, the environmental effects like ground water and surface water contamination, air pollution and global warming. All of them are of growing concern due to the increasing levels of consumption. The many problems that are now evident emphasize the urgent need to reassess the status of environmental resources. Based on the evidence, definitive plans must be developed to improve environmental management now and for the future.
The importance of non-renewable energy is not only because energy is an input of production and its consumption facilitates the production but also because it is a major source of carbon emission, leading to environmental degradation. In fact, the increased use of energy, especially from carbon-related sources, is associated with a rising level of carbon emission, which is harmful to environment and human health. Then, one of the major problems of mankind is to combine the energy consumption and to have respect for environment. The present paper is an attempt to study the effects of increased production on energy consumption and the energy content of goods and services of different economic sectors in Yazd Province. Therefore, the energy footprint index is briefly introduced and, according to the theoretical framework, the fossil energy contents of the economic sectors in the province are calculated for 2011.

Considering that the main objective of the present study is to assess and calculate the use of energy in different economic sectors of Yazd Province and since there are interrelationships between economic activities and energy consumption, we use the energy footprint indexes for domestic and foreign trade, i.e., exports and imports, and a regional input-output model to calculate the energy contents of goods and services of various economic sectors in the province. To this end, in the present study, the Industry-Specific FLQ (SFLQ) method is used based on the national input-output table of 2011 to compute the input-output table of Yazd Province in 20 sectors defined by the Statistical Center of Iran.

Information on the domestic energy footprint at the level of economic sectors in Yazd Province shows that the sectors "Other services", "Manufacture of fabricated metal products except machinery and equipment" and "Other food, beverage and tobacco" have the highest share of the fossil energy content in the final domestic demand of the province. Also, the study of the content of fossil energy in the export of goods and services shows that, in 2011, the amount of fossil energy exported through goods and services out of the province was 699,979,025 tons. The findings indicate that the "other services" and "manufacturing of metal fabricated products except machinery and equipment" sectors have the most traces of the export energy. Also, some sectors, such as "construction" and "transportation", have a small share in the export energy footprint due to their export value and low increasing coefficients. From the sum of the values of each section in the matrix of the energy footprint for imported intermediate and final goods, 20% of the total energy footprint of the imported goods and services is related to the final import energy footprint, and the remaining share belongs to the intermediate import energy footprint. The "building" and "transportation" sectors have the highest fossil energy content, respectively. The sections "Manufacture, repair and installation of computer products and manufacture and repair of electrical appliances" are in the last ranks due to their lower import values and lower energy increasing coefficients. Finally, the trade balance of energy footprint was calculated, which showed a difference between the exports and imports of virtual energy at the level of economic sectors. Although comparative and competitive advantages should be considered in exports and imports, the importance of virtual energy in competitive advantages has been ignored in the country. Therefore, virtual energy should be considered in the production of goods and services to get their competitive advantages known to the outside world. The findings indicate that Yazd Province is an importer of net fossil fuels. In other words, only seven sectors have a trade surplus of fossil energy content.

Despite the special importance of energy content (energy footprint), the number of national studies conducted in this field is very small. The energy footprint index at the macro level is less accurate than its measurement at the sectoral level. The results of the research indicate that Yazd Province is a net importer of net fossil fuels. In other words, only seven sections including "crude oil, natural gas and other mines", "other food, beverage and tobacco products", "manufacture of rubber and plastic products", "manufacture of non-metallic mineral products", "manufacture of fabricated metal products except machinery and equipment", "manufacture, repair and installation of subsidized products and manufacture and repair of electrical appliances", and "other services" have a positive energy footprint trade balance. The findings related to the trade deficit of fossil energy contents in most economic sectors of the province indicate that the industrial and production activities over there are at a low level. In other words, the trade deficit of the province proves that the structure of the province's economy depends on the outside world.

The impact of ICT on the economic and social development of countries has been studied over the past three decades using different methods and data in different time periods and at national or international levels. Studies show ICT, at the macro level of productivity and economic growth, has been impressive. The ambiguity of ICT productivity was first raised by Robert Solo in 1987. For this reason, it is also known as "solo ambiguity". "We see computers everywhere except in productivity statistics", he said. In the 1980s, most studies reported a negative relationship between productivity at the economy level and the IT workforce. However, in the 1990s, further research findings highlighted the positive and significant effect of ICT on productivity and economic growth. Therefore, the effects and consequences of ICT have been discussed by researchers since the 1990s. The purpose of this study is to examine the productivity growth in all production factors, short-term productivity growth, direct, indirect and total ICT shares as well as the average ICT and non-ICT shares of productivity growth.

This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of data collection. The study aims to explore the relationship between ICT and the productivity growth of all the factors of production. A historical study of the correct measurement of the share of inputs in production shows that there are complex tools and methods in this regard, one of which is growth accounting. Using it, one can calculate the share of technology or the growth of technology in progress, which is equal to the growth of productivity in all the factors of production and is known as "solo waste". Solo waste is the share of productivity in GDP obtained by the difference of the growth of labor and capital from the growth of output. This study evaluates, compares, and analyzes the variables considering growth accounting and the research model of Oliner and Seichel (2002). For this purpose, application is made of the survey results of the industrial workshops of more than ten employees at the level of two-digit codes of the Statistics Center of Iran in the period 2006-2016. The following equations are used to calculate the total productivity growth of the short-term factors of production: = - ( + + ) 
   
Also, to calculate the direct and indirect ICT shares, the following equations is used:   , (1+ )
The variables and formulas are fully explained in the text of the article.
First, using the data available on the website of the National Statistics Center of Iran, the nominal value added, the compensation of services and the number of employees, the total price index is extracted by years. Also, using relation (6) the real value added is estimated, and relation (5) calculates the growth of the real value added and the employees. Equation (7) serves to calculate the share of labor force, and then the data on the payment of communications and telecommunications costs are extracted from the site of the Central Bank. Equations (8) and (9) calculate the ICT share and relationship as well as the share of non-ICT, respectively. Equation (9) also extracts the data from the website of the National Center for Total Investment and ICT Statistics.  Relations (10) and (11) along with the explanations of the capital inventory section calculate the growth of real capital inventory of ICT and non-ICT. We now calculate the productivity growth of all the factors of production in the studied years. From Equations (14) and 17-13 and the explanations of the short-term productivity growth, we calculate the short-term productivity growth separately in the studied years. This paper presents the table of the average productivity growth for the total factors of production, the short-term productivity of ICT and their ranks in terms of the type of industry as well as the corresponding charts.

Calculations show that only 6 out of 23 industries have experienced total factor productivity growth. The highest productivity growth of the total production factors is in medical, food and beverage, clothing, leather and bags, and in the paper industry, while the lowest is related to tobacco, furniture, printing, chemicals and coke. Calculations also show that 15 out of 23 industries have experienced short-term productivity growth. This shows that the response of most economic sectors to ICT is positive in the short term. The most growth of short-term productivity is related to food and beverage industries, clothing, leather and bags, medicine and paper, but the lowest occurs in the printing, tobacco, tobacco and chemical industries, chemicals, office machinery and recycling. The equation    calculates the direct share of ICT, Equation (16) the indirect share of ICT and Equation (24) the sum of ICT shares. Then, the tables of the average direct, indirect and total ICT shares by years and types of industry are compared. At the end, the table of the average shares of labor force, ICT capital and non-ICT capital are compared according to the type of industry.

The share of ICT in the productivity growth of all the factors of production and short-term productivity growth varies according to the type of industry. This share has been very small and even negative in some years and in some economic sectors. The averages of the direct and indirect shares as well as the total ICT are negligible. Moreover, the indirect share is less than the direct share. The average share of the non-ICT capital is higher than that of labor and the ICT capital during the mentioned period. The difference is significant regarding the average share of the ICT capital.

Collateral constraints cause an asymmetry in the relationship between the assets of firms and households and economic activities and are a central mechanism to explain the economic volatility. When housing wealth is high, collateral constraints are slack, and the sensitivity of borrowing and spending to changes in house prices is small. Conversely, when housing wealth is low, collateral constraints are tight, and borrowing and spending move with house prices in a more pronounced manner. Collateral constraint leads to a kind of friction in the financial markets and affects the behavior of households and firms as well as the performance of the banking system. The type of mortgage collateral can be one of the limitations of financing for firms in the economy. The Basel II agreement emphasizes the importance of the type and the amount of collateral for lower performing firms. Contrary to the Basel I agreement, which treats firms equally in this regard, the Basel II agreement stipulates that, if a bank engages in a riskier activity, it must invest more of its capital in order to maintain the bank's stability. Increasing the risk of the borrower customer increases the amount of overdue receivables of the bank and increases the amount of storage in the bank's capital. In this case, when the amount of non-current facilities in the bank increases, the only source that the bank can use to return its resources is the relevant documents. Therefore, the bank prefers to enforce some collateral. The purpose of this article is to investigate the role of collateral constraints in the banking system and their impacts on the performance of the banking system. Regarding collateral constraints, the trend of research in the literature following Kiyotaki and Moore (1997) has stressed the importance of the link between the value of borrowers’ collateral and their access to funds in amplifying the economy’s response to shocks. The core of our analysis is a standard monetary DSGE model augmented to include a housing collateral constraint along the line set by Kiyotaki and Moore (ibid), Iacoviello (2005), and Liu et al., (2013).   We discuss the collateral constraint effect on banking system and macroeconomic variables in two steps. First, we construct a general equilibrium model and estimate it with Bayesian likelihood methods. The estimated model implies that collateral constraints become slack during economic volatility. In this study, a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model is used for the period of 1990-2020. Different central banks consider different combinations of pricing-based policies, collateral and quantitative restrictions to manage their credit supply. In general, the conditions that justify the use of these options are mainly based on the preferences of central banks regarding credit and systemic risk, liquidity management technologies and the cost of credit documents. In order to model the collateral credit limit, two scenarios have been considered. In the first one, it is assumed that the banking system does not show any reaction to the performance of the credit-receiving enterprise. But, in the second scenario, the corporate profit function is included in order to show the impact of the bank participation in the loans granted by the banking system and the real participation in economic activities. The theoretical and empirical results of this research show that changes in the prices of assets can produce asymmetries that are economically and statistically significant. We now consider whether these asymmetries are also important for gauging the effects of policies aimed at the credit market. The results obtained from the credit shock in the model and the comparison of the model scenarios have shown that, if the bank considers itself as a real partner in the credit activity, it is far from the situation in which to act only as a financial intermediary. Also, if the firm is unable to repay its debt, it will be more profitable and its effects on macroeconomic variables such as production, investment and reduction of bank operating costs will be better. In this paper, we provide a theoretical framework for the analysis of banking system performances in the presence of financial frictions and in the form of collateral constraints and a monopolistically competitive banking sector. In our economy, consumers are divided into households and firms who serve respectively as savers and borrowers. The resulting credit flows are intermediated by banks, which have some monopolistic power in the loans market and set optimal lending rates accordingly. The results obtained from the credit shock in the model and the comparison of the model scenarios have shown, if the firm is unable to repay the debt, it will be more profitable and its effects on macroeconomic variables such as production, investment and reduction of banking operating costs will be better. According to the results, it is suggested that the country's banks refrain from applying formal contracts in the form of banking contracts only due to short-term returns; instead, they should implement banking contracts in a real way and participate in the bank's activities in the long run. They will, thus, have a relatively higher profitability.