Sharif Digital Repository

This paper provides an empirical investigation on the individual labor supply of Iranian spouses in an intra-household collective decision framework in which gender ratio and divorce rate play a central role for resource allocation of household. The dataset is taken from the Households’ Expenditures Survey (2008) and the Annual Statistical Yearbook (2008) of Iran. I have conducted the parameters estimation and hypothesis testing using switching regression technique to catch the presence of the widespread non-participation of spouses across Iranian households. Reduced forms of labor supply are estimated considering the endogeneity of wage rates. The findings show that the unitary model of... 

In the framework of a household’s collective decision processes, this study presents a structural empirical model to test the hypothesis that child labour is compelled by household’s poverty and parent’s bargaining power against one another. To this end, a measure for mother’s intra-household bargaining power is developed. I use Iranian Household’s Income and Expenditures Surveys (2005 and 2010). Estimation method used in this study is multinomial logit. Findings indicate that household’s poverty is not the sole cause of child’s work incidence. Instead, given the other factors such as poverty, being the first born, local labour market prospect and gender fixed, mother’s bargaining power is... 

Circuit breakers, like price limits and trading suspensions, are used to reduce price volatility in security markets. When returns hit price limits or missed, observed returns deviate from equilibrium returns. This creates a challenge for predicting stock returns and modelling value at risk (VaR). In Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE), the circuit breakers are applied to control for the excess price volatilities. This paper intend to address which models and what methodology should be applied by risk analysts to calculate the VaR when the returns are unobservable. To this end, we extend Wei’s (2002) model, in the framework of Bayesian Censored and Missing-GARCH approach, to estimate VaR for a share... 

The recent researches show that value-at-risk (VaR) estimations are biased and is calculated conservatively. Bao and Ullah (2004) proved the bias of an ARCH(1) model for VaR can be decomposed in to two parts: bias due to the returns' misspecification distributional assumption for GARCH(1,1), i.e., (Bias1) and bias due to estimation error, i.e., (Bias2). Using quasi maximum likelihood estimation method this paper intends to find an analytical framework for the two sources of bias. We generate returns from Normal and t-student distributions, then estimate the GARCH(1,1) under Normal and t-student assumptions. Our findings reveal that Bias1 equals to zero for the Normal likelihood function, but... 

Market practitioners and speculators attempt to make benefits from the existence of market price gaps and profit opportunities by arbitrage strategies. Although some investors trade stocks based on the available financial and fundamental information of a particular share, there are others who make profits by risk hedging and swing trading opportunities. One of these strategies is pairs trading, which is a sub-category of statistical arbitrage. Pairs trading can assure reasonably a risk-free profit gaining. This paper aims to make a hypothetical portfolio composed of pairs of stocks by exploring a significant association between their prices in the Toronto Stock Exchange, TSX. We compare the... 

Market practitioners and speculators attempt to make benefits from the existence of market price gaps and profit opportunities by arbitrage strategies. Although some investors trade stocks based on the available financial and fundamental information of a particular share, there are others who make profits by risk hedging and swing trading opportunities. One of these strategies is pairs trading, which is a sub-category of statistical arbitrage. Pairs trading can assure reasonably a risk-free profit gaining. This paper aims to make a hypothetical portfolio composed of pairs of stocks by exploring a significant association between their prices in the Toronto Stock Exchange, TSX. We compare the... 

Economists and policy-makers believe that the Fiscal Decentralization is an effective strategy to promote economic growth. Thereby Economic Growth is seen as an objective of Fiscal Decentralization and efficiency in the allocation of resources in the public sector. This study analyzed the relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth in Iran for the period 2001-2007.We used data for 28 provinces of the country estimated the model using a panel data regression with Fixed Effect. We find that fiscal decentralization has a positive effect on Iran's economic growth  

The raising trend both in violent and property crime are of major concern in Iran. Using a panel data modeling (province wide), the paper provides an econometrics assessment of the relationship between crime against properties and violent crimes as functions of deterrent, social, economic and demographic factors in Iran, in the framework of Becker-Ehrlich crime supply theory. The findings indicate that, although deterrence hypothesis is not confirmed for burglary and assault, it explains the variations of murders and threats. Economic factors play key role in burglary and threat explanation, but they do not affect willful murders, however, Literacy explains both murders and threats. Average... 

This paper aims to estimate a demand model for health insurance and medical care in Iran, in the presence of heterogeneous and latent health status of individuals; moreover it tests the asymmetry of information in the health insurance market. Our data set have been taken from the Households expenditures survey (2006) of Iran. Parameters of the model are estimated by the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and the presence of asymmetric information (adverse selection and moral hazard) is tested by a non-parametric econometric method. The analytical model is specified under minimal assumptions on the selection process of different insurance categories and the statistical distribution of...