فصلنامه تحقیقات اقتصادی
پیاپی 138 (بهار 1401)

One of the goals of the government is to achieve to economic balances for eliminate fluctuations and improve the social welfare of citizens.The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of government expenditures in economic affairs and related chapters on the Amartya Sen social welfare index during business cycles in Iran’s economy. In this regard, the nonlinear autoregressive model with distributed lag (NARDL) has been used during the time period of 1973-2019. The results show that the positive shocks of government expenditures in economic affairs and chapters of agricultural, water resources, industry and mining, trade and cooperation, energy, housing and development, environment, and the negative shocks of government expenditures in economic affairs, the chapters of water resources, information technology, trade and cooperation, transportation and energy during business cycles have caused increasing social welfare significantly. Also, in the positive shock of government expenditures in information technology chapter during periods of boom and transportation chapter during periods of boom have caused increasing and decreasing social welfare respectively, significantly. Also, in the negative shock of government expenditures in the housing, development and industry and mining chapters increase social welfare during periods of recession and boom, respectively. In the negative shock of government expenditures in the chapter of environmental during boom periods has reduced social welfare, significantly.

Due to the increasing growth rate of electricity demand as well as relevant supply challenges, the economic issues of power systems have been considered by governments and energy experts to achieve further efficient resources allocation. Based on an approach of a dynamic system, the aim of this study has been to modelling the regional integration of electricity markets among the selected ECO member countries (including Iran, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Pakistan and Afghanistan) in order to maximize the stability of electricity supply. Accordingly, the required data have been applied during the period of 1980-2019. In this respect, two scenarios, namely a scenario of self-sufficiency of electricity (implying national electricity market) and a scenario of free regional market (implying regional integration market) have been conducted respectively, by specifying and estimating a Structural time series model, to simulate the trade flows of electricity in the selected ECO country members by 2030. The simulated results have indicated that Iran has had the marginal storage of more than one and the lowest price among the countries, while it has the largest volumes of electricity exports. Afghanistan with the marginal storage of less than one among the regional countries has had the lowest volumes of electricity Imports. In addition, the empirical results have revealed the fact that the electricity price has been decreasing as a result of a decrease in the electricity production costs. Consequently, the paper findings imply that uncertainty in the electricity supply can be reduced through implementing an integrated regional electricity market among the ECO members.

Determining a fair premium is an essential issue for insurance companies. Many premium models are based on risk analysis and market behavior. Risk analysis is divided into Priori pricing and Posteriori pricing. These models use claim frequency and claim severity. Market behavior models include some variables affecting the demand function to determine premium. In contrast, insurance companies involve with uninsurable risks such as economic risks in collision insurance, and the insurance premium depends on the price of competitors, because there are competitive insurance environments. Therefore, it is essential to consider macroeconomic variables in the demand function. This study, for the first time, includes the insurance penetration in the demand function. To achieve the goal, the researcher has selected a private company active in the insurance industry for sampling. The method used was based on stochastic dynamic programming. The wealth equation of the insurance company is determined based on the Markov process, and the objective function of the model is a quadratic form. The Demand function is described as a function of macroeconomic parameters such as elasticity of demand, inflation rate, and insurance penetration. The optimal premium is calculated for different levels of market premium. The results show the average premium of the market becomes bigger, the optimal premium becomes lower.

Due to the increase in economic sanctions in recent years, the government has been encouraged to decentralize the system dependent on oil revenues and replace it with tax revenues. The aim of the research is to investigate the effects of macroeconomic variables on the underground economy with an emphasis on the fiscal policy instruments in Iran in 1973-2021. For this purpose, at first, the value of the underground economy was estimated by the mimic method. The results showed that the average underground economy (proportion of production) is equal to 15.19 percent over 48 years. The results of estimating the model in two formats using the ARDL approach indicate that government size (based on total, current and capital expenditures) has an inverse effect and tax burden (based on total and indirect tax) has a direct effect on the underground economy, but direct tax has no significant effect. Considering the decreasing trend in the government size and the almost increasing trend in the tax burden, it can be said that the decrease in the government size and the increase in the tax burden have been effective on the increasing trend of the relative size of the underground economy. Also, the informal exchange rate and the inflation rate have a direct effect on the underground economy, but in terms of size, the inflation rate is inelastic. Therefore, according to the high elasticity of the underground economy respect to the tax burden, the government should consider a suitable combination of tax components according to their elasticity and be able to control and reduce the underground economy to some extent by defining the duties of the government, reducing the current expenditures and allocating more capital expenditures.

The policy of providing foreign currency at preferential exchange rates for the import of basic goods, especially food, was implemented at the beginning of 2018 to support the more vulnerable segments of society. On 9, May, 2022, four years into the implementation of this policy, however, the government eliminated the preferential exchange rate for some commodities such as red meat, chicken meat, eggs, dairy products, and vegetable oils, given the country's economic conditions to target the subsidies, mitigate the negative effects of the policy, and help improve the economic situation. Furthermore the government has also started to pay a monthly sum of 400,000 Tomans to the first three income deciles, and 300,000 Tomans to the next income deciles of society in cash to compensate for the welfare loss to households. This study investigates the effects of removing the preferential exchange rate on the demand for the above-mentioned food and non-food commodities including clothing, housing, transportation, and other goods that are of great importance in the household consumption basket, taking into account some demographic variables including household size, gender, age, education level, and the employment status of the household head in the first weeks of implementing the policy. The percentage increase in the price of the studied food products in the time interval before and after the implementation of the policy is calculated based on the official prices presented by the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade. The effect of the implementation of eliminating the preferential exchange rate policy on the welfare of Iranian urban households is investigated by applying the EASI demand system model, extracting price and income elasticities of demand, and simulating the cost data of individual households after the implementation of the above policy using the compensating variation (CV) measure and recalculating the Gini coefficient. According to the results, the Gini coefficient indicating the reduction of inequality, will be relatively improved in the short term if the government implements the policy, assuming the price of other goods remains constant.

This study seeks to measure the degree of housing speculation in selected provinces of Iran with a spatial econometric approach, and for that porpuse, the real value time series data on land prices, housing prices, GDP and rents in 20 provinces during the period (1385-1396) is used. After examining the effects of these variables on the housing prices of the selected provinces, a fixed-effect spatial autoregression model was estimated and the degree of housing speculation in the provinces was calculated based on the gap between the average actual and the estimated prices (intrinsic value). The results indicate that housing rent and land prices have a positive effect while GDP has a negative effect on housing prices. The housing prices gap was significant for all provinces which based on that, then, the degree of speculation of the provinces was calculated. The spatial and contiguity effects of provinces on their neighbors were estimated as well, based on provinces' neighborhoods and their degree of speculation.