نشریه اقتصاد و جامعه
پیاپی 5 (پاییز 1384)

To establish a foreign exchange reserve fund is one mechanism for managing oil incomes. These funds have been established often with the idea of offsetting fluctuations in oil-income or of providing savings for future generations, but in most countries they have been used for purposes contrary to their original establishment. This article examines the theoretical bases for oil income funds and their applications in Iran

To analyze the international oil market and predict future oil prices and the underlying reasons therefor is often a difficult undertaking. Like every other commodity and every other market three groups of elements have their individual impact on oil: Number one is basic elements that include mainly supply and demand and their underlying factors with often long-term consequences. Number 2 is politico-psychological reasons. They are political developments with psychological consequences, and as long as those developments continue to exist so will their consequences. These consequences are often of mid-term character, and finally there are technical elements that have short-term implications. This survey reviews all factors that leave their impact on the market and on the world oil prices within the above terms. In this survey we will also list the number and the variety of those factors and their diverse impacts on oil market and we will attempt to find out the reasons why it is difficult to clearly analyze current developments and forecast future trends in the market. Since the whole issue is much to broad to be covered in its every aspect in such a brief article as the present I will make an effort to offer the most important of those elements in the present oil market

Fundamentalism has offered great accomplishments for economics. Among those accomplishments are focus on the fundamentals of the market system, insight into internal relations in enterprises, the sequence of economic policies and the interaction between politics and economy. This article offers a critical evaluation of the populist privatization policies. Populist privatization transforms the fiscal system to a share-dominated system without the presence of the requisites for its efficient operation. This approach substitutes the public sector proprietorship with small and diverse proprietorship. For the same reason it aggravates the problem of monitoring the conduct of executives and the problem of corruption in those enterprises. In the meantime, to prioritize privatization over improvement of business and the work environment precipitates monopoly.

A unique feature of the present-day economy is that structurally it is based on knowledge and learning. Not that it is important because it serves to enhance production, efficacy and efficiency in industries, but because the phsycality of products has somewhat lost its previous significance and instead the preference is towards services such as computer software, audio-visual media, genetic chains, product purchase and delivery y internet and ICT type products with its own impact on the productivity of national economies. In spite of that, certain developing nations seem to have no share in the creation of those technologies or do they seem to be able to learn and utilize the advanced know-how of other nations to their own advantage which means the socalled digital divide between nations is widening. To identify the reasons therefor and to find out how to narrow that divide we must analyze the present conditions and plan ahead long-term. The objective of this survey is to review present conditions in Iran and the world and future global prospects as well as the prospects in Iran.

This article proposes that “historical approach” and “appropriate methods” are the best defendable and the most serviceable of all tools with which to analyze the problems of development and backwardness. Based on the same proposition it offers a comparative survey of the thoughts of the four listed thinkers for understanding the fundamental problems of national development. The main conclusion of this survey is that all of the four listed thinkers advocated application of historical analysis and material-livelihood of the peoples each presenting the proposition consistent with their environmental, circumstantial and intellectual peculiarities that were applicable within their certain limits. The key findings of those thinkers have then been critically evaluated within the peculiar conditions in Iran. The author concludes that in light of the peculiar conditions in Iran the analytical devices of the fundamentalists are comparatively better capable of explaining development issues in Iran.

There are two different approaches to the proposition of Time in the ultratheoretical sphere of social science: One falls within the framework of Newtonic paradigm and the other within the quantum paradigm. Expanding the ultratheoretical quantum paradigm system this article attempts to offer an appropriate theoretical system with the objective of offering an analysis of economic theory using the multi-layer network game and the quantum game theory.

Marxist studies has traditionally prompted considerable studies about Iran’s economic history. In its cognitive approach the Iranian Marxist tradition has been markedly under the influence of the Soviet-style Marxism and has consequently encountered ideological, theoretical and methodological impasses with consequential impact on its evaluation of economic and social structures in Iran. The present article is an effort to offer a critical evaluation of the cognitive process of the Iranian brand of Marxism, its complications and their role in shaping the foundations of research in this tradition. The topics in this article are offered in two separate sections. The first section addresses the relation between the Iranian brand of Marxism and “experimentalism”, and the second section covers the theoretical and methodological complications rooted in the Russian interpretation of Marxism and their consequential historical evaluation of economic and societal structures in Iran.