مجله دانش و توسعه
پیاپی 30 (بهار 1389)

Considering the expansion of global poverty and its resulting concerns, the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) may not be achieved unless a solution is found for this widespread phenomenon. Therefore finding a solution for poverty reduction and improving the welfare of the vulnerable group has become a universal objective. This paper discusses the poor performance of formal financial markets and financial institutions in order to help the poor in developing countries. The paper argues that microfinance and microcredit are suitable substitutions for helping the poor. Some international experiences suggest that microfinance can empower the vulnerable group, lifting them out of poverty and helping them select a desired path. Applying econometrics and statistical techniques to Iranian data, it has been seen that microcredit and microfinance can play a key role in economic growth and added-value in the agricultural sector. This in turn will result in an overall poverty reduction.

"Structural adjustment" is the name given to a set of "free market" economic policy reforms. Reforming of relative prices is the main building bloc of structural adjustment programs. This paper attempts to compare the interactions among the variables in the structural adjustment policy package with the status of theoretical predictions by the Washington Consensus and at the same time, it investigate the efficiency of correction in the relative prices in Iran. Therefore, in the first part of the article, the concepts of adjustment and its roots in the Neoclassical theories and structural adjustment limit is expressed. Then in the next section, it deals with Schematic Summary of Iran's macroeconomic system and theoretical system of the Washington Consensus. Then, the paper, with comparing the performance of structural adjustment in both theoretical and real situations, assesses efficiency of relative prices reform. In the third part, relying on specific characteristics of the Iranian economy, difference between objectives of structural adjustment and its consequences in Iran's economy is expressed. Results present "the structural adjustment puzzle" and attention to this puzzle in the relative prices reform is the most important recommendation in this article.

In this paper, we investigate variations of gold coin price and also probe to model the fluctuations and conditional variance of coin market returns. The data consist of daily market prices of gold coin over the 1380 – 1386 period. Since volatility clustering is viewed in time series of returns, we employ ARCH (Autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity) methodology in order to model the variance of returns. The results suggest that EGARCH is the best choice among other models of the ARCH family. The fluctuations are influenced by oil price and exchange rate. Exchange rate has the greater effect than oil price on conditional variance. Leverage effects were observed in gold coin market. It means that good news have greater influence rather than bad news with equivalent magnitude.

The theoretical base of this paper is the economic growth model that completed with capital stocks (private and public) and human capital. At the first, hypothesis test about constant returns to scale is studied, and then the related variables with macroeconomic policies are added to the model. The results show that 1) the aggregate production function exhibits increasing returns to scale, 2) private investment and public investment and human capital have a positive effects on economic growth, 3) fiscal policy, import of goods and services growth with a two-period lag and the share of the oil sector value added in total GDP have a positive effect on economic growth. 4) Liquidity growth, tax growth and exports of non oil goods growth have no meaningful effect on economic growth, and 5) Liberalization of trading has a negative effect on economic growth.

Crude oil price and the U.S. effective exchange rate are two main economic variables that have had real effects on world welfare situation. The aim of this paper is to test whether there is a stable long-run relationship between oil prices and the U.S. dollar, expressed in real term. To this end, we perform co-integration and causality tests between the two variables, using quarterly data from 1985:1 to 2008:4. Our results show that a 10% rise in the oil price coincides with a 1/8% depreciation of dollar in long-run, and that the causality runs from oil price to the dollar. Furthermore, we estimate the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) to analyze the short-run behavior of real effective exchange rate and the speed of adjustment when it deviates from its long-run path. Results show that the speed of adjustment is 4/3 percent for each period that means in each period (or each season) the deviation of real effective exchange rate dollar from long-run path shrink to reach its long-run path.

This study aims to investigate the effective factors on non-development of tourism industry in Golestan province. The standard questionnaires are used to doing this descriptive, cross-sectional and tentative that those be scattered after measuring their validity and reliability based on simple-random sampling(for tourists) and taxonomy-sampling(for experts) between tourists and experts. The analysis of research data is performed by SPSS software. The results of this research showed that significant relation exists between non-development of tourism industry of Golestan province and quadruplet factors (multiplicity of decision-making centers, lack of fundamental equipment and tourism services, weakness of marketing, lack of culture of reception of tourists.

This study examines the relationship of "book value" and "net income" with the value of companies (Stock Prices). The results are consistent with previous study for “strong companies”, but in “weak companies" the relationship of two criteria with the value of companies is almost the same. Although, the "book value" have a higher relationship with the value of the firm, but the difference isnt significant.

Wide fluctuations of the prices of chicken and egg along with the containment of these fluctuations always matter to producers, consumers and government. These fluctuations are affected by various factors on the supply and demand sides of the product and its inputs. The results of this research are as follows: Contributing 1.5 and 1 per cent to the world production of chicken (76.3 million tons) and egg (61.3 million tons) respectively, Iran is of eighteenth and seventeenth ranks in the world. By comparing domestic and foreign prices of chicken on a floating exchange rate basis during 1991-2005, it is found that the domestic price has been always lower than world price by 1999 but higher afterwards. However, the domestic price of egg has been always lower than its world price. A review of the monthly retail prices of chicken and egg during 1370-84 also suggests that both products have followed a similar price trend. In fact, prices have the highest growth in spring with a slow increase in summer, resurgence in autumn and the lowest growth in winter. In addition to price fluctuations, the most important challenges to Iran's poultry farming are high production costs, long period of production, feed-to-chicken coefficient, and dependence of the poultry farming on input importation, especially feed. According to our findings, in the egg market, 1, 4, 8 and 16 enterprise concentration ratios have been respectively 1.94, 6.58, 10.868 and 17.05 per cent in 1384. Therefore, the market structure of egg production has been competitive. One-enterprise concentration ratio has reduced from 3.2 per cent in 1375 to 1.94 per cent in 1385. Herfindahl index of egg market was about 0.005 in 1375 but reduced to 0.003 in 1384, implying an increased competition in market structure. During 1379-83, Lerner indices of domestic markets of chicken and egg, in comparison with their export markets, have increased from 0.06 and 0.13 to 0.43 and 0.37 respectively, reflecting an increased competition in export market structures of chicken and egg.

In this paper, financial services in the Iranian as a sector with a leontief production function, This sector buys inputs from other sectors for its productions and provides services to expedite the cash fellows and risk transformation to other sectors, The first relations are called backward linkage and the later relations are called forward linkage, for quantification of the linkage, employment and output elasticity of input-output table, The forward index of value added and backward linkage of final demand are used, Furthermore, direct and indirect effects of a hypothetical extraction of this sector on output and employment are countable, The results of research indicated that, by selection leontief method, if the backward and forward linkage effects of financial services sector are eliminate, decrease of employment will be 215,814 person, whereas, by selection Gosh method, decrease of employment will be estimated 687,037 person.