نشریه مطالعات و سیاستهای اقتصادی
پیاپی 2 (پاییز و زمستان 1393)

Given the lack of comprehensive explanation about the factors affecting the fair wage. This paper uses the analytical and descriptive method, explaining the eight components of the labor force characteristics that affect the determination of fair wages. In order to find the priority to those components: interviews with representatives from labor groups, employers, and academic experts were held in Iran. Thus, it became clear that to achieve fair wages, paying attention to all the features of the labor force is necessary. In other words besides the marginal product of labor (which has the third degree of importance), skill level, creativity, level of education as a sign of intelligence, duration of work or experience, seniority and responsibility in the work hierarchy should be taken into consideration as well. It should also be mentioned that workers and employers have different priorities towards each of the above mentioned components. So it is necessary to set up institutional settings to fill the gap between them.

The main purpose of this article is to evaluate the effectiveness of the government quality level on efficiency of its size. For that, at first, government quality based on Kaufman and others (2006) approach, has been categorized into four levels: Very good, good, poor and very poor. Then, a Cobb-Douglas production function has been estimated using the data period of 1986 tell 2012 and using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method. The results show that, various levels of government quality have had different effects on economic growth and also on the efficiency of the government size. It means, when the government quality is very good, the economic growth will increase faster and under this condition, increasig the government size in long and short run, have more positive effect on economic growth. These findings reflect the need for paying more attention on planning for improvement of the government quality by relevant policies.

Health care is a public good and provides considerable positive externalities. It is the most important reason for the government intervention. Since 1960s, government has followed different policies through different plans during which the scope and methods of government intervention in the health sector has changed. Since President Rafsanjani government, along with the economic structural adjustment policies, privatization of this sector increased and the tariff rates for Government agencies as providers of health services have liberalized and modified. The purpose of this study is to examine the circumstances and the impact of implementing structural adjustment policies on economic growth in this sector through the Logistic Smooth Transition Autoregressive model (L-STAR) during 1967-2006. Final results suggest that the implementation of structural adjustment policies during the years 1991-1996 in the health sector did not have a significant effect on the economic growth of Iran.

Given the main distinction of conventional banking from interest – free banking is to avoid usury, this paper focuses on adapting performance of banking system to prohibition of usury principle and this issue is of great importance, since the performance of banking system has faced with deficiencies and ambiguities that whether banking system is consistent with Islamic codes. Thus, introducing quantitative and specific indicators seems necessary to cope banking system activities with Shari`a criteria and principles to measure the distance or proximity of the usury prohibition from its performance. The hypothesis of this paper is that, more than half of bank transactions at branches of Tejarat Bank of Mashhad are usury. The research method is descriptive and content analysis, in which indicators for usury prohibition are estimated using survey study and filling the questionnaires by Shia ayatollahs and jurists. The statistical population consists of all contracts among branches of Tejarat Bank of Mashhad and bank customers during 2009-2010. Using cluster sampling, a sample with 451 customers, who get bank facilities, was selected. Although the principle of non-interest banking operations is fully comply with the Shari’a, but the results of the estimation of indicators for usury prohibition indicate that more than half of bank trasactions at branches of Tejarat Bank of Mashhad are usury.

Environmental emissions caused by unstable development, imposed many social costs to our society in recent years. In this survey, we calculated the social welfare costs caused by environmental emissions of energy consuming industries subcategorized under ISIC four-digit coded products of non-metallic minerals and basic metals in Iran; using Leibenstein method. At the beginning of this survey it was assumed that the least and the most negative side consequences on environment in our country are respectively imposed by copper and brick industries. But results showed among the studied cases, non-ferrous foundry with a cost equal to 1.03 percent of its production value imposes the least and Cement, building Lime and gypsum Industry with a cost of 50.7 percent of its production value imposes the most expensive cost of environmental inefficiency on the society. In addition to that, social welfare costs caused by welfare triangle and economic rents of these industries are negligible in comparison with environmental x-inefficiency costs; and include a small amount of welfare costs calculated by Leibenstein method for polluting industries. High costs of achieved social welfare, show the necessity of proper planning in order to increase the environmental efficiency, adopting effective anti-monopoly policies and green tax laws to reduce the harmful effects of energy carriers consumed in polluting industries.

The present paper examines the relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty with relative price dispersion using monthly data over the period of 1991-2012. In this context, the GARCH technique for modeling and calculatoin of the inflation uncertainty is applied.The results show that the increase in inflation uncertainty increases the dispersion of relative prices. Also, regardless of the positive and negative unexpected inflation, the dispersion of relative prices significantly increases. But, the analysis of both positive and negative unexpected inflation and considering them as part of the equation shows that both are significant at a high level. The positive and the negative effects of unexpected inflation cannot be considered symmetrical. In response to positive unexpected inflation shocks firms change the prices, alternately. Hence, positive inflation unexpectedly increases the dispersion of relative prices. On the other hand, firms against the unexpected negative inflation do not change their prices. So, the negative unexpected inflation reduces the dispersion in relative prices. It also concluded that the inflation variable coefficients are statistically significant at a high level. This means that the positive unexpected inflation increases considerably the dispersion of relative prices.

One of the goals of economic development in each country is to improve the incomes of rural households. In this regard, one of the key ways to achieve this goal is strengthening human capital factors such as health (Hygiene) and education. Health Promotion and the education of people in rural areas because of its effects on increasing productivity will increase the income of people in rural areas. And thus the states will access to its original ideals of equality and justice. According to a linear model of Ahlowalia – Asafo, the overall aim of this study was to investigate the effects of human capital and infrastructure costs over income inequality in rural areas of the Iran. For this purpose, we used the auto regressive distributed lag models (ARDL) and time series data for the years 1979- 2011. The results showed that the investments in the field of health, education and infrastructure costs have a significant impact on reducing income inequality in rural areas of Iran. In addition, the linear model of Ahlowalia – Asafo based on the relationship between total factor of productivity in agricultural sector and income inequality in rural areas is not voidable.

The government, investors and analysts are interested with the topic of Economic security, because this is one of the most important and effective factors that influences on macroeconomic variables. Investors and planners would be able to adopt optimal decisions and policies by accessing the data of economic security procedure. Accordingly, this study simulates and estimates the economic security index and it’s volatility in Iran for the period of 1965 till 2007, by using Fuzzy logic method and MATLAB program.This measure is important because it can help us to understand the effect of government policies on fluctuation of economic security. The result of paper illustrates that the economic security index was the maximum amount for 1976, and was the lowest amount for 1982. In the last ten years of the study period, the index has shown a growing trend.

Today's the fast growth of tourism as a profitable and clean industry for each country has changes in economic, social and environment. Iran with different potential such as geographic situation, culture and historical background can be among the countries with having profitable tourism industry, of course for using the available opportunities require extensive studies regarding this issue. Since, most important factors that affect the tourism industry are security and economic security, this study tries to evaluate the relation of these factors with tourism in Iran.In this study, ARDL method was used during 1970 to 2010. Also, short and long-term relationship between country's tourism index (as a dependent variable) with macroeconomic variables (such as inflation, unemployment, trade and GDP), some indexes of economic security (such as exchange rate and production fluctuations) and money laundering (using GARCH) evaluated and analyzed. The results show that the index of money laundering can be a negative factor for attracting tourists to the country and tourism development requires the fighting against money laundering as a security and development disturbing factor.

Considering the importance of the relationship between government size and trade openness, this study has examined the nonlinearity effect of trade openness on the government size in Iran during the period 1991-2011. The results show that trade openness has an asymmetric effect on the government size in the form of a two regime model.Also, in the first regime (when trading volume is less than 39/53% of GDP), trade openness, consistent with the Efficiency Hypothesis, has negative effect on the government size. Whereas in the second regime (when trading volume is more than 39/53of GDP), trade openness, consistent with the Compensation Hypothesis, has positive effect on the government size. Finally, the results show that the size of government increases by increasing the share of government revenues and investment in GDP.