Sharif Digital Repository

The representation concept links the information processed by the brain back to the world and enables us to understand what the brain does at a functional level.Representational models specify how activity patterns in the population of neurons relate to sensory stimuli, motor responses, or cognitive processes. In an experimental context, representational models can be defined as hypotheses about the distribution of activity profiles across experimental conditions. Three different methods are currently being used to test such hypotheses: encoding analysis, pattern component modeling (PCM), and representational similarity analysis (RSA). All three evaluate the second moment of the distribution... 

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... 

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... 

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.

 

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  

The main objective of this research is to provide an estimation of the amount of rent in Iran as an oil economy. First by reviewing recent studies, the concept of rent was extracted and the rent measuring indexes were assessed. Having considered the four categories of rent in Iran, budgetary rent, interest rent, import rent and energy rent, the amount of rent in Iran’s economy during (1369:1-1386:4) was estimated. Results show a considerable increase of rent during (1369:1-1372:4) & (1384:1-1386:4). In the next section of this study the long run and short run relationship between rent and some of the macro economic variables was estimated.In this section the co-movement of rent trend with... 

The simplest definition of Total Factor Productivity is the rate of converting inputs to outputs. In other words, with fixed inputs and a raise in the Total Factor Productivity, more output can be achieved. In this study, we review the existing methods for calculating this variable and its determining factors. On the basis of Diewert’s criteria, Fisher index is known to be the most appropriate indicator to calculate production, price and productivity indices. Fisher index is obtained by dividing the index of output to input in which in addition to values of output and input, price data are also used. Between prices and values used in this calculation only price series for wages are not... 

Exchange rate is one of the macroeconomic variables that can affect domestic product, economic growth and unemployment. Since macroeconomics wants to explain inflation, unemployment and economic growth, exchange rate is one of the most important macroeconomic variables. In economic literature, many studies have been performed to investigate the linkage between Real Exchange Rate (RER) and other real economic variables (such as domestic product, unemployment, etc.). In this study, we first construct the RER for the economy of Iran and then, using Vector Error Correction Model (VECM), short-run and long-run relations between RER and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is evaluated.
The results 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... 

The low performance of the natural resource economies in terms of economic growth has been considered in different fields of social sciences recently. Variety of policies suggested escaping from this phenomenon with respect to different standpoints. In this research, based on a theoretical approach, we tried to model the leader and people’s behavior in resource rich countries with political economics viewpoint and rational players. The contribution of this research is the introduction of state owned enterprises (SOE) as a basis to resource curse, which has not been considered precisely before. In our model, we have two players (leader, people), two alternatives for resource allocation... 

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... 

In this thesis, a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model under new-Keynesian assumptions has been proposed for the economy of Iran, as a major oil-exporting economy. The economy is supposed to be inhabited by households, firms (both final-good and intermediate-good producing firms), a government and a monetary authority. It is exposed to stochastic and exogenous shocks to total factor productivity, oil export revenues and the growth rate of money. The most important features of the model, which distinguish it from most other proposed models for the economy of Iran, are the assumptions of the presence of monopolistic competition in intermediate-good producing firms and also a degree of...