Sharif Digital Repository

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... 

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.

 

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... 

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... 

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... 

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... 

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... 

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.... 

Duct Inverse design problems usually involve finding the wall shape associated with a prescribed distribution of wall pressure or velocity. In this investigation, a novel iterative inverse design method is presented and developed for internal flows. In the proposed method, the duct walls shape is changed under a novel algorithm based on the deformation of a virtual flexible string in flow. The deformation of the string due to the local flow conditions resulting from changes in wall geometry is observed until the target shape satisfying the prescribed wall’s pressure distribution is reached. The flow field at each step is analyzed to obtain the current pressure distribution along the wall.... 

Theory says that prudential fiscal policies can mitigate the unintended consequences of business cycles. Does evidence support the effectiveness of fiscal policies is still a challenging question. In this thesis, I focus on the relationship between fiscal policies and aggregate movements in oil producing countries. I found significant pro-cyclicality in these countries in which questions the goal of their policy making. Furthermore, I show that in my sample of oil producers,data doesn’t support the poorer is the country, the higher is the pro-cyclicality of their fiscal policies  

Findings of economics in last decade shows that social and economic institutions have direct influence on economic performance of a society. However, these institutions are determined by the state. In different regimes, the political power is in the hand of different social groups with different preferences and goals; as a result, different social and economic policies and institutions are take place in different political regimes. In this research, we study economic performance of a society under control of two different political regimes: in first, the majority rules the state and in second, there is a totalitarian regime in which; the political power is concentrated in hand of a group of... 

The role of government in economy has been a controversial subject in economics. Lately, there has been some fundamental change in evaluating this subject. One could mention two of these as 1) realizing the importance of micro-founded macro model for evaluating policy, and 2) taking into consideration the rent-seeking behavior of politicians. In this research, a general equilibrium in a micro-founded macro model will be discussed and then in political economics framework, the effect of government on this equilibrium will be investigated. Only the redistribution role of government has been considered. First, the model in which a benevolent government is seeking optimal policy is Discussed.... 

The notable share of housing sector in GDP (approximately five percent) shows this sector’s relation with macroeconomic activities. On the other hand, House as an asset leads housing sector to be affected by monetary and fiscal variables. A dynamic panel data was used in this study to evaluate the relations between housing sector and some macroeconomic variables in metropolises of Iran. As results show, in long term growth of liquidity, GDP per capita and sharp ratio have positive effects, and land per capita has negative effect on housing price in metropolises of Iran. Price increases have not been equal in different cities. Inequality of land price between metropolises and between... 

Gini coefficient is the most prevalent index for the measurement of inequality and is usually extracted by means of nominal variables based on income or expenditures of households. In this study we have extracted more accurate Gini coefficients. By using the raw data of Households Budget Survey (HBS) and STATA software, a special CPI for each household of the sample is extracted. Subsequently nominal expenditures are deflated by these special CPIs, and at last, Gini coefficients are extracted from real expenditures. Our findings indicate that in recent years, extracted Gini coefficients are remarkably higher than prevailing ones.
 

In this research, an Index of Iran informal economy in response to the government interventions in credit, labor and product markets is stimated by EMIMIC model. To do this, first these interventions are measured using principal components analysis. In the model, the variables GDP and employment are used as indicators and taxation rates, government distortions in credit, labor and product markets, government expenditure, per capita income, unemployment and inflation as causes of the informal economy. We conclude these government interventions have affected Iran informal economy and their influence is more than indirect interventions influence such as taxation. The estimated index of Iran... 

Economic performance of resource rich countries is related to their political systems. In this research, consistent to Hosseini (1388), we develop a theoretical model in which we classify the political systems of those countries to four systems based on corruption, myopic behavior of the incumbent, ideological bias of people, and the popularity shocks in elections. We show that in a fixed institutional framework, democracy leads to higher welfare for people and better economic performance. However, in a society with low corruption, high political convergence, and low popularity shocks both democracy and dictatorship maximize the social welfare in the model