مجله بررسی مسائل اقتصاد ایران
سال دوم شماره 1 (پیاپی 3، بهار و تابستان 1394)

There are numerous studies on life insurance using different approaches; however, less attention has been paid to the methodological aspects of the issue from a cognitive point of view. This study is an effort to present a research method based on the recognition of different dimensions related to the issue of life insurance. The findings of this research based on theoretical and empirical studies, offer a combined methodology emphasized on institutional and cognitive analyses as well as designing a mechanism to clarify and analyze the issue of life insurance. According to the suggested methodology in this study, the presented strategies are based on cognitive analyses consisting of redesigning of methods, structures, and the strategic-operational objectives.

Homo economicus and economical characteristics of human behavior is one of the most important topics in economic theory. Economics as a human science for modeling, forecasting, policy making and all its functions requires a proper understanding of man as self-centered and decision-making. At least after a point in history of economics with the acceptance of principles such as maximizing self-interest and rational behavior, mainstream economics, especially neoclassical economics has ignored the anthropological studies. Some economists believe these inflexible assumptions are the causes of practical economic failures. Behavioral economics aims to solve this problem through various methods. Today, behavioral economics has made great progress with the help of Psychology’s knowledge and research methods. Behavioral games are one of the research methods of behavioral economics. This paper attempted to study the methodology of behavioral economics through the introduction of the most important and widely used behavioral games. The seven games discussed are prisoners’ dilemma (PD), public goods, ultimatum, dictator, trust, gift exchange, and third party punishment

During the 1950's and 1960's, the theoretical trend in economics, particularly neoclassical economics, was rested on certain assumptions including rational behavior maximization, methodological individualism, and complete information. Some economists believe that such inflexible assumptions caused the failures of neoclassical economics and hence, established a new method for studying and analyzing the economic relations. Instead of using general equilibrium models, their basic idea is centered on partial analyses to clarify the complexities of strategic interactions among economic agents possessing private information. A firm in this approach is considered as an organizing structure rather than a production function or a technical foundation. In this structure both the process in the formation of a contract among economic agents due to lack of symmetric information and the ways that lead the agents to make appropriate decisions are analyzed by using the incentive theory. This study is mainly aimed at introducing the incentive theory, explicating its operational method, as well as implementing it in empirical contexts.

This article firstly investigates the freedom concept from various approaches and describes the difference among freedom types. Then it puts its focus on the concept of “democratic freedom” and distinguishes it from other types of freedom. In this article, democratic freedom is defined as the elimination of any kind of restriction and obligation originated from different social institutions imposed by the ruling power (governments, kings, parliaments and other powerful groups) which holds the society regulations; these restrictions can be political, social, economic etc. and formal or informal, in a way that the expression “freedom for …” can be used to eliminate them. Then the article, by using six assumptions concerning the social actors’ behavior, tries to test its central hypothesis. This central hypothesis is: In a society satisfying these six assumptions, restrictions and rules are passed (or democratic freedoms are restricted) so far as to maximize the real net social benefits. Next, the article makes an attempt to develop an analytical framework for the theoretical confirmation of the hypothesis. To this end, the article introduces the social cost and benefits of the democratic freedoms. After that, by considering the net benefits of freedom, the optimum point of the democratic freedom expansion will be presented. In the next step, the article analyses the freedom relations with the development and shows that the more the society develops the less will be the costs of freedom. Finally, the article shows that if there are expanded relations among the political systems with democratic freedoms, so that information flows among them freely, it is expected that there will be a convergence among “belief-values” packages of the societies in long run, and all of them will move towards the middle society.

The significance of the stock exchange market in the economy has made its elimination from the novel economy almost impossible. The capacity in this market has embodied various transactions, which are identified in legal terms in order to discover their elements, institutes, relations and effects. Analyzing such transactions can reveal their situation in the civil and trading laws. Thus, Muslim thinkers and experts have no choice but to conduct a jurisprudent study comparing the common transactions with Islamic contracts. The present paper aims at a comparative study of the transactions in the stock exchange market and the Islamic contracts. In various types of common transactions in Iran, including the stock exchange of negotiable papers or goods, there are elements and relations that seem to be inconsistent with some Islamic contracts. However, given the widespread capacity of Islamic jurisprudence, other contracts can replace them. For example, instead of transaction of bonds and pawn brokerage-based sale of shares in the Stock Exchange Market which are not consistent with Islamic contracts can be replaced respectively with Sokouk ('coins') (Islamic stock exchange) and simultaneous advance purchase and sale.

Since structural change, along with traditional factors determining the growth such as labor force, capital and technology is known in theory and practice as one of the potential factors in growth due to providing the possibility of full and optimal utilization of resources, knowing the properties of structural changes in an economy can present a clear picture of possible economic growth. This is true especially when this knowledge is gained and used as a comparative criterion in comparison with indices of structural change in exemplary economies. This paper assesses the long-term trend of structural change in Iran’s economy determined by Hodrick-Prescot Filtering in comparison with corresponding variables in newly-industrialized countries. For this purpose, the status of structural variables in the period before the first rise in the oil price (years before 1973), the oil period (1973 to 1977), the revolution and war period (1978 to 1988), renovation period (1989 to 1998) and the period of implementation of the 3rd Development Plan (1999 to 2004) are analyzed. The results indicate that all structural variables in Iran’s economy had a trend similar to newly-industrialized countries in the period before the rise in oil price. However, the inappropriate changes occurred in the variables in the oil, revolution and war periods due to numerous economic and political shocks. Though some indices relatively improved in the periods of renovation and implementation of the 3rd Development Plan, the variables still remain in an unsuitable condition in comparison with their levels and trend in 1960’s and the first half of 1970’s and also in comparison with the trend of corresponding variables in newly-industrialized countries.