فصلنامه برنامه ریزی و بودجه
پیاپی 114 (پاییز 1390)

One of the major concerns of the Government in the national level during the recent decade has been performance-based budgeting in its agencies. Therefore, this has been underlined in the 4th and 5th development plans if the Islamic Republic of Iran. Given the importance of the issue, this paper tries to propose a model for performance-based budgeting at Iranian Center for Statistics, using cognitive mapping and analytical hierarchy methods. This model relies on a continuum of “input-process-output-outcome”, emphasized in performance-based budgeting. This research tries to answer the following questions: what is the performance-based budgeting map of Iran Center for Statistics? What is the elements priority of such a map according to MADM approach? In the first phase of the study, a performance-based budgeting map was drawn using cognitive mapping technique. The cognitive map of Statistical Center of Iran, resulted from the first phase, contains 9 outcomes, 22 outputs, 14 processes and 5 inputs. In the second phase, priorities were set regardless of the dependencies between the processes, categorizing them into two levels, i.e. organizational ‘inputs’ and ‘functions’ from the budget allocation point of view.

This paper tries to provide an estimate of efficiency in eight Iranian banks, namely, Melli, Saderat, Mellat, Tejarat, Sepah, Refah, Keshavarzi and Maskan during 1996-2008, using the globally flexible Fourier Cost Functional Form and imposing theoretical regularities, discussed in Neoclassic microeconomic theory. One of the efficiency estimation methods is to estimate the cost function of banks. In order to choose a suitable ‘functional form’ for the cost function, according to Gallant (1982), local flexible functional forms such as translog may misspecify the real cost functional form; therefore, there is a tendency for globally flexible functional forms. Meanwhile, Gallant and Golub (1984) showed that estimating cost function without satisfying theoretical regularities, positivity, monotonicity and curvature, results in mismeasured magnitudes of cost efficiency and misleading efficiency results. Hence, it is necessary that these regularity conditions be imposed to cost function. We find that Iranian public banking industry suffers from 15 percent inefficiency in average.

Change could be deemed the most pivotal issue in the process of countries’ gaining access to development. Having the important status of institutions in mind as far as development is concerned, the institutional change has turned into an outstanding subject among institutionalists as well as development thinkers. This article demonstrates that from among the various explanations presented about institutional change, the ones are regarded preferably better that try to explain “institutional change” on the basis of ideas. Meanwhile Greif’s and particularly North’s explanations are welcomed by intellectuals even though they suffer from some shortcomings. One of the evident weaknesses of these theories, including that of North’s, is that it fails to explain why a new idea proposed by entrepreneurs is publicly accepted. According to our surveys, paying attention to the points expressed by other scientists on how ideas are extended can further North’s and other thinkers’ explanations about institutional change.

The lack of a unified jurisdictional rule in civil and commercial issues at international level and global nature of cyberspace caused that effect of a legal acts exceeds the bounds of a country and several courts exercise their jurisdiction to one legal relation by resorting to various factors. To avoid this unwanted jurisdiction, parties of international contract attempted to determine the competent court in the electronic contracts, does this act has legal validity? Can the entities electronically express their will regarding the determination of a competent court? The legislative and judicial approaches indicate that this act has formal legal validity, like written according to principles of functional equality and freedom of form and technical neutrality. But in merits, its validity should be analyzed in the light of principles of forum non convenience, judicial equity and supportive jurisdiction.

The purpose of this paper is to study the main determinants of the bilateral real exchange rates for major oil exporting countries vis-à-vis the US dollar. Taking into account the impact of the real oil prices on real exchange rates, it may be observed that oil prices play a significant part in determining the terms of trade. In addition to the real oil price, two other fundamental factors that are purported to influence the behavior of the real exchange rate, namely, the productivity differentials and a term reflecting the demand-side bias were examined as well. Unbalanced panel data, covering the period within 1970-2005, were used for estimating the parameters of the model. Estimation result shows that elasticity of the real exchange rates with respect to oil prices are 0.13. It is observed that a rise in the real oil prices leads to an improvement in the terms of trade, and consequently lowers the real exchange rates, and causes a real appreciation of oil exporting countries’ currencies. Moreover, according to our estimations results, the existence of the Balassa-Samuelson effect is also confirmed in the economies of the oil exporting countries. Difference in exchange rate regimes was examined, too. Increases in government expenditure resulted in different behavior of real exchange rates in the oil exporting countries with different exchange rate regimes.

The main idea behind this article is to study the causes and origins of loss-making in Rural Cooperatives as well as to recommend and prioritize applied solutions to systemize and improve their situations. Rural cooperatives due to their networking and popular nature enjoy some potentials in a way that would help to improve development goals in villages and agricultural sector provided that they are supported and efficiently well managed. This study first tries to explain the purposes of these institutes and those of the Rural Cooperation Organization; later, the most prominent reasons for losses of rural cooperatives are cited on the basis of previous studies, existing documents and the viewpoints of the members of local authorities and bodies expressed in special questionnaires. Meanwhile some advisable solutions were recommended in order to improve the situation and systemize loss-making bodies. Then the solutions were prioritized, using the hierarchical analysis method that provides a context for cooperation and collective participation in decision-making. According to the results of the research, the first priority in the rural cooperatives systemization is to select the board of directors and managing director from among the knowledgeable and active experts. As human resources systemization is considered the main requirement and top priority of the loss-making cooperatives, it would be advisable to add selection of inspectors as well as systemizing employees and salesmen to the list. According to the experts, other priorities are the development of economic activities such as establishing interest-free funds to grant facilities to the members, development of complementary & process industries as well as buying-selling the agricultural products that need hefty financial resources and relatively great liquid assets.

This research tries to make a content analysis on seven academic-scholarly journals in the field of economics quarterly published within 2006 – 2010 to find out the number of articles, authors’ sex, education, team working as well as the subject matter of the articles. According to the results of the research, 994 papers were authored by 2215 researchers within this five-year period. More than half of the articles, i.e. 53.8 percent were written by two authors. Only 14.8 percents of the papers were written by female scholars, and the rest, i.e., 85.2 percent of the papers were authored by male researchers. The majority of the researchers, i.e., 59.8 percent hold PhD degree. The subjects of the papers were divided into 17 main categories, based on the classification of the international journals, JEL. The subject matters of the articles were primarily specified through analyzing the title, abstract and keywords; later it was followed by thorough analysis of the text itself. According to the results of the research, ‘financial economics’ with 15.9 percent was the most frequent category. Meanwhile, "macroeconomics and monetary economics" with 15.8 percent and ‘international economics’ with 15.4 were second and third in rank respectively. Two quarterly journals, namely, ‘Economic Research Journal’ and ‘Economic Researches’ published most of the papers in these three subject categories. Moreover, the results revealed that only less than ten percent of the articles studied other subjects.