Iranian Economic Review
Volume:16 Issue: 30, Autumn 2011

The target costing management is a collection of methods and tools of efficient management like activity based on cost (ABC), value engineering, value cycle, Kaizen, life cycle of product that follows the purpose of decreasing cost products through design and production phase to produce customer’s favorite product with desired price and ultimately distribute in the market. Several studies by Masters and PhD students in this field have been done show that the necessity of using these techniques in the organization has been felt in Iran in the recent years. Some organizations already used these techniques for achieving the above objectives and some of them have already achieved a moderate degree of successes. ََThe current conditions of the world economic activity in the markets for commercial successes require high-quality products and services. In the new concept, the influence of these new techniques would have a great impact on the demand of customers.

This paper evaluates inflation forecasts made by parametric and nonparametric models. The results revealed that the neural network model yields better estimates of inflation rate than do parametric autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and linear models. Furthermore, the neural network model outperformed nonparametric models (except MARS).

In recent years, progress in information and communication technology (ICT) has caused many structural changes such as reorganizing of economics, globalization, and trade extension, which leads to capital flows and enhancing information availability. Moreover, ICT plays a significant role in development of each economic sector, especially during liberalization process. Growth economists predict that economic growth is driven by investments in ICT. However, empirical studies on this issue have produced mixed results, regarding to different research methodology and geographical configuration of the study. The aim of this research is to empirically study the external effects of ICT on economic growth by the endogenous production growth model, using panel data collected from newly industrialized countries (NICs) in the world namely Mexico, Brazil, China, India, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand and Turkey over the period of 1990-2008. This paper indicates a considerable lags between the time of investing in these technologies and the time at which the externalities arise. The focus is on the possible network effects and spillovers emerging as externalities from investments in ICT. This study also shows that productivity obtained from ICT is larger than one would expect from a standard neoclassical growth accounting approach.

Tourism is a rapid growing phenomenon and has become one of the largest industries in the world. The impact of tourism is extremely varied. The introduction of tourism will imply an increased stress on resources available and the tourism industry is very resource- and land intensive. An influx of tourists into the area leads to a competition for resources. This competition is compounded by employees working at the tourist sites. Almost as a rule tourists are supplied at the expense of the local population. Following Leamer (1984), standard Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek (HOV) equations incorporating measures of factor endowments are used to explain observed trade patterns. The advantage of focusing on trade patterns is that they can be analyzed through conventional theories of comparative advantage. To test whether natural sources distort patterns of tourism’s trade, variables representing the natural sources are added to the HOV equations and the coefficients tested for significance. We examine the relationship between factor endowments, natural sources and tourism’s net exports by Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek (HOV) model in the 15 European countries. The results indicate the travel & tourism sector employment and energy use have negative effects, but arable land, forest area and fixed investment expenditure have positive effect on tourism’s trade. The renewable internal freshwater resources flows’ region is non significative in attracting tourists.

The objective of this paper is to explore the role of global financial crises in creating oil price shock affecting both importing and exporting countries of East and West Asia over 1980-2008. It also investigates the oil shock effect on trade relations among these countries during the period. Accordingly, we specify a demand export model including particularly two control variables of oil price shock and financial classes. The specified export model is estimated dynamically by a version of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach (ARDL) through using macroeconomic data of the Asian economies. The results obtained by this method are used to analyze for both long-run and short-run. Overall, the empirical results indicate that financial crisis and oil price have a significant interacted effect on trade flows of the Asian exporting countries in the short-run, while it is not applicable in the long-run. The implication is that financial crisis and oil shocks are two different incidents that occur separately and do not essentially affect each other.

In this paper two approaches for trading and forecasting on Euro-Yen exchange rates are suggested. In the first approach three decision-making models are developed to maximize profit of trades during a specific period. Traders have three options to perform a trade at each market time that are: (a) Opening a buy trade, (b) Opening a sell trade and (c) Refusal of trading. These options are considered in the models by using related decision variables. Results of these models conform to qualitative contents in literature of foreign exchange market and present trading strategy on the basis of the indicators to maximize profit. The aim of second approach is forecasting the direction of exchange rate (increase or decrease) over a specific period on the basis of values of indicators in previous time period. In this approach two heuristic models are developed to minimize mean of errors of forecasting. Then mean of errors of developed models are compared with four major classification algorithms. Results show that the proposed model has higher accuracy in forecasting.

The objective of this paper is to explore the role of global financial crises in creating oil price shock affecting both importing and exporting countries of East and West Asia over 1980-2008. It also investigates the oil shock effect on trade relations among these countries during the period. Accordingly, we specify a demand export model including particularly two control variables of oil price shock and financial classes. The specified export model is estimated dynamically by a version of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach (ARDL) through using macroeconomic data of the Asian economies. The results obtained by this method are used to analyze for both long-run and short-run. Overall, the empirical results indicate that financial crisis and oil price have a significant interacted effect on trade flows of the Asian exporting countries in the short-run, while it is not applicable in the long-run. The implication is that financial crisis and oil shocks are two different incidents that occur separately and do not essentially affect each other.

The present paper studies the selection of household portfolio in the presence of housing market. A major theory in the study of housing prices and their fluctuations is the theory of household portfolio. The present study attempts to examine the theory to show whether it applies to Iranian economy. For our purpose, we examined all data about the assets under study, including stock shares, foreign currency, gold coins, banking deposits, bonds, and housing over the fiscal period from 1991 to 2006. Applying the mean – variance spanning test model with MATLAB to calculate the return, risk, and correlation coefficients during the period, the optimal composition of assets in household portfolio was determined. The model operates through simulating and giving different weights to each tier of assets. Firstly, categorizing the households into low, medium, and high-risk, it determines the optimal composition of household portfolio based on degrees of risk-taking in the absence of housing. Then it examines whether the existence of housing in the household portfolio and a household's choosing it as an asset would help improve the level of risk and return in the portfolio and change the portfolio composition. The efficient frontier which is the envelope curve of the most efficient portfolios was also extracted. The results show that housing is a significant asset in household portfolio in such a way that the presence of housing would influence the efficient frontier. Moreover, in a spell of rising foreign exchange rates, foreign currencies obtained a substantial portion of household portfolios, but a series of stabilization and unification policies pushed them out of portfolios. During the period, housing was the dominant asset in portfolios.