Sharif Digital Repository

This thesis analyzes the behavior of inflation in the Iranian economy by introducing a micro-founded model of monetary policy. The model predicts a direct relationship between inflation and oil export revenues in the oil dependent economy of Iran. This theory driven claim is verified empirically, and test results tend to confirm a meaningful relationship between inflation and Oil export data in Iran. Based on results attained from the micro-founded model, an augmented SVAR model is proposed for estimating underlying inflation in the Iranian economy. The proposed model is found to render better results than the conventional models used for estimating underlying inflation. Moreover it is... 

Empirical results in this research show that oil abundance in an economy tends to increase income inequality. Three mechanisms: Trade, civil liberties and imperfections of financial markets can explain this empirical finding, with the first being an alternative explanation for the Dutch disease. Besides, due to the influence it could have on parents underestimating the future costs of their children and because of the rents it produces, Oil abundance could reduce the opportunity cost of having children which results in a higher fertility rate. Moreover, empirical results confirm the negative relation between inequality and growth through the fertility mechanism. Therefore apart from... 

Government intervention in markets may go beyond the market regulation. Interventions may cause some idiosyncratic price distortions. It means the relative prices of factors to become different among firms. Therefore, micro conditions for firms will be changed. These will result in misallocation of factor production between firms and change in manufacturing TFP. According to data from about 14000 medium and small industrial firms in Iran, removing misallocation of production factors (capital and energy) and output idiosyncratic distortions between industrial firms would result in 115 percent increase in manufacturing TFP.

 

Study on the economics of happiness has grown rapidly in recent years. Most studies are based on the data from developed countries. In this thesis, determinants of life satisfaction in Iran and some other developing countries have been studied at micro and macro levels.Our research at micro level is based on analyzing 4550 observation for Iran gathered at two years (2003 and 2005), at macro level we have used from microdata of 44 developing countries including Iran. Relevant data was extracted from WVS (World Values Survey) databank. At micro level we have shown that the life satisfaction increases by improvement in income, health status, and religious participation. In addition, life... 

The aim of this paper is to perform macro stress test for one of Iran’s private banks using bank’s quarterly data from Q-4 1383 to Q-4 1389. To do this, the relation of bank’s default rate with macroeconomic indicators like house prices and the growth rate of value added of services; as macroeconomic risk factors; was investigated by a linear model. Results show that the bank’s default rate has a negative relation with both risk factors.Stress testing, using monte carlo simulation; shows that reverse shocks to both house prices and the growth rate of value added of services leads to severe increase in bank’s default rate; so that with decrease of both house prices to 4 million rials at... 

On the contrary to common explanations of fertility transition in the Iraninan Economy there has been a growing human capital without decline of fertility for some decades followed by a rapid fall in fertility without a higher growth of human capital during the next decades. Accounting for these facts we propose a new link between subsidies financed by exogenous oil revenue and the evolution of fertility and human capital. While the educational subsidy accelerates the growth of human capital, the presence of financial subsidies keeps fertility from declining. Then, fertility declines with sizeable delay but sharply because (i) high fertility in first generations implies a growth rate of... 

The purpose of this research is the extraction of socio-economic factors (separation of household and household members) that affect the use of banking services in urban area of Iran. In this study we used data of the "family access to financial services in urban areas of Iran in 1387" that has been sampled by the department of economic statistics of central bank of Iran. The statistical information of this organization is in form of completed questionnaires and based on household addresses in a city and contains of 6055 urban household's information. In this project 15922 persons have been studied in urban households include the caretaker and the other family members. In addition to... 

In this research, the effect of political system on economic performance of resource abundant countries is studied. We use political economy litreture to develop a theoritical model in this issue. Here, the politcal systems are divided to democracy and dictatory and in each of them other institutional variable will be introduced. Policy indicator is based on the difference between social welfare in each situation and its optimal amount when maximized. We show that if democracy does not come with high accountability it reduces social welfare more than dictatory. Also, if politician are myopic, democracy aggravates economic performance in those countries. In addition, easy access to income... 

Our study investigates the real consequences of variations in the first and second moments of working capital requirement (WCR) in the presence of financial frictions. We introduce a theoretical link from imperfect information about WCR to firms’ performance. Firms choose non-prepaid factors of production with uncertainty about required prepayments, where their access to credit is constrained by collateral. After realization, firms with higher WCR may face financial constraints. This uncertainty influences their demand for inputs, albeit risk-neutrality. Unable to employ the projected level of prepaid input, constrained firms encounter capacity underutilization, leading to misallocation of... 

Institution covers wide range of rules, laws and policies. Two bodies of literature around institutions and resource curse have evaluated institutional quality by limited indices. In addition, although different institutions have different effects on economy, the literature hasn’t classified different kinds of institution. Furthermore, resources can affect institutions in different ways. This research has been surveyed the impact of resource dependence on institutional quality. Institutions that regulate relation between governors and citizens were named governmental institutions. Institutions that regulate the relation of citizens were named nongovernmental institutions. Governmental... 

Financial structure of firm is a determinant of firm’s cost of capital. Cost of capital is a determinant of firm value, so studding of Factors affecting the financial structure has become one of the most important topics in the financial economics in recent decades. Theoretical studies relating to the financial structure of firm have generally been aimed to studying the determinants of optimal financial structure. Empirical studies have also focused to studying the relationship between observed financial leverage and a set of explanatory variables. This approach has two major shortcomings. First, the observed leverage deviates from the optimal leverage. Second, the empirical analyses are... 

This study aimed at using industrial organization approach for banks and the use of models of determining the market structure and the level of competition in Iran’s banking industry. Models of market structure determination are divided into two categories: structural models that are the same as calculation of concentration indices using market share and non-structural models that are the same as revenue-cost nature of economic enterprises. Structural models have been established based on two theories of structure-conduct-performance (SCP) and efficient structure (ES). The difference between these two perspectives depends on the good or bad nature of concentration in banking services market....