نشریه پژوهش های اقتصاد صنعتی
پیاپی 28 (تابستان 1403)

Competition and monopoly are key concepts in the industry. Competition in an industry improves quality and decreases prices for consumers, while a monopoly leads to price setting and production reduction, which can diminish quality and innovation. In this article, an attempt was made to examine the situation of monopoly and competition to examine competition and monopoly power in large industries such as basic metals, the motor vehicle manufacturing industry, and the chemical products manufacturing industry. For this purpose, various criteria such as concentration, barriers to entry, economies of scale, Lerner index, markup, and social cost of monopoly were used. For data analysis, raw data from the Statistical Center of Iran with a four-digit ISIC code during the period 2002 to 2018 were used. The results showed that the basic iron and steel production industry, the basic chemical production industry, the primary plastic and synthetic rubber production industry, and the motor vehicle production industry had the highest sales share. These industries have high concentration, high Lerner index and mark-up, high barriers to entry, high social costs, and low economies of scale. Additionally, in these industries, there was a significant and positive relationship between the Lerner index and welfare costs of monopoly. In addition, it was determined that the social costs of monopoly were high in all years of the mentioned period and reduced the efficiency and welfare of society.

The aim of this study is to estimate x-inefficiency and welfare costs of monopoly in the chemical products industry. The Liebenstein-Komanor approach was used to estimate the welfare costs of monopoly. For this purpose, data from the survey plan of industrial workshops with ten workers or more from the statistics center from 2002 to 2018 for the chemical products industry with a four-digit ISIC code were used. To calculate the welfare costs of monopoly, the x-inefficiency index, marginal cost, and price elasticity of demand were obtained first, and then the welfare costs of monopoly were estimated. The survey results showed that the synthetic fiber production industry had the highest level of x inefficiency with a value of 0.59, while the plastic and synthetic rubber production industry had the lowest level of x inefficiency with a value of 0.23.  Furthermore, based on the results obtained, the welfare cost of non-competitive performance in the plastic and synthetic plastic production industry in the first form had the highest amount, which was 7159843190 million rials.Therefore, to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of Iran's chemical industry, it is recommended to facilitate access to financial resources, improve transportation and logistics infrastructure to reduce production and distribution costs, and enact appropriate laws and regulations to enhance product quality and reduce environmental pollution.

This study investigates the impact of industrial agglomeration on the economic resilience of Iran’s provinces using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). The results indicate that industrial agglomeration has a positive and significant effect on enhancing economic resilience. This effect is realized through improving employment conditions, profitability, and competitiveness of firms, as well as through adaptation and learning mechanisms. Additionally, social services contribute to reducing production costs and increasing economic resilience, although their effect is not statistically significant at the 5% level. Industrial production efficiency has been identified as a key factor in strengthening economic resilience, as it can reduce transaction costs through common infrastructure and technological spillovers, while reinforcing innovation and specialization. Furthermore, market size has a positive and significant effect on the economic resilience of provinces, and its expansion helps to reduce the costs of accessing markets and raw materials. Based on the findings, policy recommendations include strengthening industrial agglomeration, enhancing social services, improving production efficiency, expanding market size, and considering industrial diversity. Implementing these recommendations can help boost the regions’ economic resilience and reduce their vulnerability to crises.

Nowadays, achieving a balance between economic development goals and environmental protection has become one of the main priorities for policymakers. Using the E-DSGE model, this study introduces a new rule for fiscal and monetary policies and carbon taxation, aiming to regulate and stabilize carbon emission levels along with ensuring economic growth. It analyzes the interactions between fiscal and monetary policies and environmental policies. The findings indicate that while all the mentioned policies can bring carbon emissions close to the target level, their underlying mechanisms differ. Fiscal and monetary policies impact emissions by changing production levels, while environmental policies affect emissions by altering firms' spending on pollution reduction. In the presence of positive productivity shocks, fiscal policy is more effective in adjusting tax revenues, monetary policy in regulating prices, and environmental policy in modifying carbon emission intensity

Due to the great collapse of trade after the financial crisis of 2008-2009, attention to the role of country financial risk for exports has increased. The country's financial risk, as considered in this study, is a measure of the country's ability to meet its financial obligations on the international level. The main issue in this article is to determine the extent to which Iran's industrial exports are affected by the country's financial risk, and to identify its determining components in comparison to other traditional factors affecting exports. Therefore, panel data for the period from 2002 to 2022 have been used in the framework of the gravity model and the maximum likelihood Pseudo-Poisson (PPML) method. Econometric analysis does not confirm the role of Iran's country financial risk in the industrial export supply growth. However, the country's financial risk conditions of export destinations are statistically confirmed as one of the effective factors in Iran's industrial export growth. The remarkable point is that the country's financial risk conditions of export destinations have the most impact on Iran's industrial exports compared to other classic factors of the gravity model, such as the real exchange rate, common border, and GDP per capita of export destinations. Among the five determining components of the country's financial risk for export destinations, reducing current account risk, servicing debt, foreign debt risk, and international liquidity risk increase the demand for Iran's industrial exports. It is recommended that export companies and development institutions consider the country's financial risk criteria when selecting and identifying target markets.

In the decade of 2011-2020, the Iranian economy faced an average economic growth rate close to zero due to economic sanctions, inefficient management, low productivity, and inappropriate economic policies. In this regard, the country's monetary policymakers tried to support production by using the tool of payment of loans for increase the country's  value added. The main issue of the present study is whether the payment of these loans by the banking industry has increased the value  added of the country's provinces? Since the payment loans were in two forms:  Transactional contracts (Murabahah, installment sale, lease with condition of ownership, Salaf, purchase of religion, Ja'ala and Istisna) and partnership (Incorporating) contracts (civil partnership, legal partnership, Mudaraba, Mazareh and Musaqat), was there a statistically significant difference between the impact coefficient of these two groups? According to theoretical expectations, have cooperative loans, which are long-term in nature, provide capital, and have a direct effect on the production and services, had a greater impact on the growth of value added in different provinces compared to Transactional loans, which are short-term in nature, are intermediary with the possibility of determining the interest rate in advance, and have an effect on the demand for goods and services? Based on two different perspectives, Keynesian and classical, is money neutral according to the classical perspective and cannot cause production growth, but will only affect the inflation rate, or according to the Keynesian perspective, can monetary policy tools and the creation and payment of bank credits in the money market cause production and value added growth through the expenditure channel? To answer these questions, which form the same research hypotheses, the econometric estimation method using the panel data method was used, and each provincial statistics including real value added, capital (Capital of stock exchange companiesc in each province from 2011-2020), employed labor, and balance of loans with Partnership and Transactional contracts were collected and used in the estimation. According to the research results, the most important factor affecting the value added of the provinces was the variable Kt (the supply of goods and volume of accumulated capital of listed companies). Contrary to the research hypothesis that partnership loans are more effective than Transactional loans, there is no difference between these two groups except when it is converted into the capital variable (Kt) and appears in the financial statements of the companies as an effective production factor.