Sharif Digital Repository

The vulnerability of women in the labor market is a well-established fact, but it can be long-lasting when a shock hits them. We examine women’s labor market conditions in a developing country with a substantial set of cultural norms and provide evidence that a job destructive shock persists longer among women. Specifically, probability of remaining unemployed after 20 months is about 50% for women while it is 10% for men. These findings are exacerbated for women who have not worked for more than 5 years and probably have lost their network or are new entrants in the job market. Moreover, women in the private sector, which is a more competitive market in Iran with respect to public jobs, are... 

Many Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems, particularly in low-resource environments, struggle to produce natural and intelligible speech from grapheme sequences. One solution to this problem is to use Grapheme-to-Phoneme (G2P) conversion to increase the information in the input sequence and improve the TTS output. However, current G2P systems are not accurate or efficient enough for Persian texts due to the language’s complexity and the lack of short vowels in Persian grapheme sequences. In our study, we aimed to improve resources for the Persian language. To achieve this, we introduced two new G2P training datasets, one manually-labeled and the other machine-generated, containing over five million... 

In Islam, a solar eclipse is considered a significant event and a sign of the power of Allah (God). During a solar eclipse, Muslims are encouraged to perform a specific prayer. In addition, it symbolizes and reminds believers of the Day of Judgment. The solar eclipse is an exogenous and predictable event with no daily life consequences. Therefore, the only channel that may affect religious spending is a spiritual reference to God. We find that a total solar eclipse within a past quarter significantly increases the likelihood of religious contributions by 2.44 percent, mainly driven by making vows and donating to holy shrines. It also increases the donation sizes and its share in total... 

The low female labor force participation rate in the Iranian labor market relative to the global average and even to countries that do not differ significantly from the socio-economic characteristics of our country is one of the important questions of the Iranian labor market. In this study, we seek to answer the question of whether the economic participation rate of married women will increase if the gender gaps in wages, job findings and job losses among women and men are eliminated in the Iranian labor market. To answer this question using household expenditure and income data and labor force data, we show that between the two categories of occupations, in terms of the share of women's... 

Daily price limits are boundaries that regulators impose to control daily volatility in stock market. This paper studies the impact of an imposing price limit in Tehran Stock Exchange. To this end we use all the data about companies which were accepted in stock exchange and fara-stock exchange in 1392.In this year the price limit imposed on companies in stock exchange and fara-stock exchange are 4 and 5 percent respectively. Therefore, to estimate the effect of price limit we use the propensity score matching method and inverse probability weighting.The results indicate no significant differences between returns and trade volume between 4% and 5% price limits, but a significant difference... 

This study investigates the price elasticity of gasoline smuggling demand in Iran. For this purpose, a panel data of monthly gasoline consumption has been used that contains data for 160 regions of distribution for Iran's Oil Production Company between 2005 and 2014. The results of estimating the monthly elasticity of gasoline smuggling demand in each region show a significant impact of the gasoline price differential between Iran and its neighboring countries, as well as the distance of each region with the neighboring countries on the demand. The results of this study show that whenever gasoline prices increase inside the country, the inclination to smuggling has been decreased due to a... 

Iran has one of the lowest rates of female participation in the labor market among countries. In 2015, for every 100 men over 10 years old, only 21 women’s labor force participation was confirmed. This paper attemps to determine factors which cause low participation rate of women, particularly married ones. For this purpose, using structural estimation method, a dynamic discrete choice model was built, and estimated with means of simulated method of moments (SSM). The results indicated that the most important factor for low participation rate of married woman is children cost. Elimination of this cost would increase participation rate of married women about 30 percantage points  

The goal of this research is to obtain optimal toll for saveh-salafchegan, Tehran-pardis and Ghazvin-karaj highways. To obtain optimal toll, Small and Yan value pricing model was extended and then parametrs of the model was estimated by using daily data of Maintenance and road transport Organization, then value of time parameter was structurally estimated and optimall toll was numerically obtained for the highways. Finally sensitivity analysis was performed for all parameters. Results show that optimall toll for saveh-salafchegan highway is unique and respectively, are in interval τ≤0.03 and τ≤3.72 . Magnitude of value of time of road users and difference between value of time of users... 

This research is aimed at analyzing the effects of forming relationships between oil and gas companies and drilling rigs owned by drilling companies. For this purpose, panel data on 13240 contracts signed between 2000-2010 worldwide are used through employing a model with fixed effects and an instrumental variable for day-rate. Results show that repeated interaction between oil and gas companies and drilling rigs, does on one hand increase the number of contracted projects in future contracts, and on the other hand, improves their drilling performance. Moreover, it is seen that such effects are only captured by the first few interactions, and that they subside and vanish after the firms have... 

The paper aims to investigate the importance of firms’ financial constraints for pricing equity in Iran. We study the impact of financial constraints of non-financial firms on their stock returns using a sample of 241 manufacturing firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) for the period of 2007 to 2014. We use a similar index as in Kaplan and Zingales (1997), KZ, to measure financial constraint. We examine whether financial constraint influences stock returns and can improve the explanatory power of the Fama and French three-factor asset pricing model. Our findings indicate that financial constraints can be considered as an important factor affecting asset returns. Cross-sectional... 

On May 5, 2014, Iran began the Health Transformation Plan in public hospitals to promote vaginal delivery by increasing physician fees and by freeing payment of natural labor. About five month later part of the plan extended to non-public hospitals, and the fee of vaginal delivery increased there as well. These consequent exogenous policies provide an ideal environment to examine how Ob/Gyn physicians and pregnant mothers respond to financial incentives using difference-in-difference identification. We find that after the first reform caesarean rates declined by 4.92 percent in public hospitals without any health deterioration, a significant but modest drop. Our results suggest that in the... 

The case for boosting the share of children benefiting from early childhood development (ECD) programs is strong, but expenditure has to be well-aimed. Not every program adopted under the name of ECD will provide the positive impacts that currently anchor ECD discussions among policy makers. In this report, we present results from an experimental evaluation of Cash Grant for Child Care program implemented in Sistan & Baluchestan province of Iran as a government subsidized ECD. The program provides monthly grants to ECD centers, as well as in-kind food quota per every child attending the center. At the end of school year, we did not find any significant differences in cognitive and... 

Gasoline consumption resulting from vehicular traffic is one of the most significant factors influencing the emission levels of pollutants. Since the sold gasoline at fuel stations does not necessarily translate into vehicular traffic, tracing the final consumer becomes challenging. hence, estimating the impact of gasoline consumption on air pollution is accompanied by biased results. Moreover, the COVID-19 outbreak, acting as an exogenous shock, has provided an opportunity to use data such as COVID-19 and intercity travel as instrumental variables, gasoline consumption, and emission levels, between 2018 and 2020, show unbiased estimates of the effect of gasoline consumption on air... 

In this reaserch by comparing some of the recent litreture on indentification production Function,we estimate total factor productivity. We focous on parametric methods, especially Blundell and Bond (2000), Ollay and Pakes (1996), Levinsohn and Petrin (2003) and OLS.Using panel data on plant-level of 4-digits isic in Iran from 1380 to 1390. We choose Levinsohn and Petrin (2003) as the most appropriate estimator then we use that estimator for estimating productivity of plants. At the end we investigate the relation between firm size and productivity, also its ownership and productivity  

In order to estimate the inter-sectoral labor mobility costs in Iran’s economy, in this research, we design and estimate a structural model of worker’s decisions. The estimation method used in this research is Simulated Method of Moments and we have used Labor Force Survey and Household Expenditure and Income Survey in order to extract necessary moments. Our findings show that: 1) inter-sectoral labor mobility costs in Iran’s economy are large and they are between 3 to 11 times the annual income. 2) These costs are higher for female, rural, older and high-educated workers. 3) If these costs were zero, production in tradable and non-tradable sectors would have been 36 and 16 percent larger... 

Using single RAID HW-Controller in data storage systems can become a single point-of-failure. Hence, it will affect system availability. As a result, in enterprise-class storage systems, utilizing dual-HW-Controller architecture for managing redundant array of independent disks is prevalent to enhance performance and reliability. Employing such architecture, however, faces major challenges. One of these challenges is the synchronization of dual-HW-based controllers in case RAID arrays revealing erratic behaviours. No thorough study has been done for evaluating dual-controller architecture synchronization mechanisms and its performance. In this thesis, different configurations of enterprise... 

This study examin the effect of relationship lending on the contract terms of the loans consist of loan rate, avalibility of the loan and collateral reqierements. For this purpose, we use 4850 data of loan granted by GHavamin bank in three months Farvardin, Ordibehesht and KHordad in 1395. The results of this study indicate relationship lending has a negative significant effect on the loan rate, a positive significant effect on the availability of the loan and positive insignificant effect on the collateral requirements. Thus, relationship lending as a solution for information asymmetry, leading to cost advantage for the banks. Banks transfer this advantage to client by lowering the loan... 

In the present study, the effects of increasing the value of shale gas production, either due to increased production or price increases, have been studied on economic variables such as employment, wage, property value and the number of births. In this regard, the data for each of these variables was used at the county level in the United States of America between 2000 and 2011. In order to estimate the desired effects, counties are divided into two types of boom and non-boom counties. The findings indicate that increasing natural gas production will lead to more employment and wage growth in boom counties than non-boom counties. Also, during the period of increasing production, the value of... 

In this research, for the first time in the literature of this field, indirect social pressure applied by text message campaign is used. The findings of this research can help the blood transfusion organization (IBTO) to send more optimal text messages. The advantage of indirect social pressure is lower cost while allowing for faster and wider use. Also, text message blood donation campaigns are more homogeneous than peer to peer pressure to motivate people to donate blood. For times when there is a severe shortage of blood resources, such campaigns can be very helpful. The method of causal identification in this research is the use of a randomized controlled trial. In this experiment,... 

This research investigates the impact of mass labor migration on the incentives for adopting artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in industries. The study adopts a theoretical framework based on the model introduced by Acemoglu and Restrepo in their seminal 2016 paper. In the modeling framework of this research, there is a representative firm and a technology monopolist. The representative firm operates under a task-based production function, which allows the substitution of workers’ tasks with machines powered by AI, up to the technological capacity available. The technology monopolist determines the technological capacity of the firm, provided that it has sufficient incentive to...