فصلنامه برنامه ریزی و بودجه
پیاپی 119 (زمستان 1391)

In recent years, the economists have been deliberately thinking about the idea of fiscal decentralization, i.e. transfer of decision-making authority from central government to local institutes (in proportion to composition of expenditures and revenues). A good number of researches were conducted to know its effect on economic variables such as economic growth. Great strides were made in Iran to develop fiscal decentralization through establishing provincial revenue-expenditure system, followed by the creation of provincial administrative and financial institutes within the years of 3rd and 4th development plans. This article tries to assess the fiscal decentralization effectiveness on the economic growth in provinces, within the framework of three indicators, namely revenue decentralization, decentralization from national development expenditures, and finally decentralization from development expenditures allocated to provinces. Having gone through the reliability test of variables, and after having approved the long-run relationship between the model variables through the use of Pedroni and Kao C.H. tests, the researchers analyzed the effect of fiscal decentralization on the economic growth of Iranian provinces within 2000-2007 according to extended least square method. The results demonstrated that there is a linear positive relationship between decentralization from credits of national development expenditures, decentralization from credits of development expenditures allocated to provinces and provincial economic growth in a way that 1 percent of fiscal decentralization leads to 0.6 percent of economic growth in the provinces. Yet, there is a non-linear relationship between revenue decentralization and the economic growth in provinces. If revenue decentralization in provinces increases up to 85 percent, economic growth in provinces could rise.

The purpose of this paper is to study the “disinvestment effect” of a counterfactual electricity efficiency improvement in Iran. The Researchers apply a computable general equilibrium model with special assumptions about given electricity price, heterogeneous labor market, wage rigidity and imperfect capital mobility between sectors. It was found that after a 10% electricity efficiency improvement, the capital stock declined by 9.53% and employment reduced by 9.48% in electricity sector. Services, industries and agriculture sectors had more capital and labor inflow respectively.

It is necessarily advisable to ponder about the “change process”, most particularly in the area of human interactions so that one make more consummate realization of numerous occurrences and challenges like cases of success or failure in highly assorted political, cultural, social or economic plans that societies experience. On the other hand, understanding the causes and effective factors leading to the phenomenon of change as well as “change process” could be considered as one of the critical challenges in studying various fields of humanities in which the philosophers and thinkers were interested even in the years B.C. Accordingly, this article tries to study the ideas of different intellectuals in this area in order to propose more vivid definitions of the phenomenon of change in a way that they may pave the path for conceptual modeling of changes in economic performance. This study indicates that different economic schools deal with the “change process” with varying degrees of importance. The mainstream economics passes by this significant phenomenon with a brief view while thinkers of other economic schools employ dynamic and multi-disciplinary analyses in an attempt to explain the phenomenon of “change” as a major concern; Hence, Hayek introduces the discussions of connectionist models and qualitative order, Schumpeter goes on with entrepreneurship and presents the keyword “Novel”, and North, emphasizing cognitive subjects, puts forward the theory of mental models and learning process, all in a try to take care of this major concern.

This article basically tries to examine the relationship between efficiency and risk in Iranian banking system. The scholars here simply employ two approaches, i.e. parametric (economic-based) approach, and non-parametric (mathematical optimization-based) approach, to assess the efficiency, rank the banks, select the optimal model and at last, identify the impact of credit, operational and liquidity risks on banking system. To meet such an end, 15 banks were taken as the statistical population of the research during 2005-2010. The findings illustrate a difference between the two parametric and non-parametric efficiency assessment approaches in ranking the banks; in the mean time, they signify a relative superiority of Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA) over Multi- Directional Efficiency Analysis (MEA). Eventually, the results indicate a significant relationship between “credit, operational and liquidity risks” and the efficiency in Iranian banking system.

The occurrence of negative impacts of economic growth led the intellectuals and policy-makers to consider sustainable development in mid-1970s. Meanwhile, social issues and themes influenced the methods, goals and domain of planning in the midst of a paradigm shift in the area development policy-making. Iran enjoys a background of over 60 years in the area of development planning during which 11 plans were devised. These plans were based on the models and theories that reflect both the external conditions and backgrounds as well as the viewpoints of the policy-makers on the subject of development. Therefore, review and analysis of such plans may help to sketch the theoretical trend of development in Iran. This article tries to survey the methods, goals and domain of development planning in Iran. Who were the activists, taking roles in development planning? To what extent did the environmental factors affect the contents of the development plans? What was the share of social areas such as education, health, housing, welfare and social security in the plans? To answer these questions, the laws and regulations related to development plans before and after the Islamic Revolution of Iran (1988) were reviewed with thematic content analysis using extended Easten black box. According to the findings, background variables of policy-making environment critically affect essential and structural variables. The results indicate that planning in Iran are not socialized from the methods and formulation point of view; meanwhile, social goals have not been considered as the tools of growth or as the tools to reduce negative impacts of economic growth-based policies.

Recently, institutional explanations have turned into the ruling ones to expound the causes of resource curse. From among the institutional approaches, this article picks out the theory of North and his colleagues, who believe that the underlying challenge of economic growth in countries is not confined to the quality of one or several certain institutions and that it could be explained by the method of developing an order in the society. They hold that the way to develop the order influences the institutional quality and as a result it affects the economic growth. The findings shows that the econometric surveys within 1970-2010 reaffirm the theory of North and his colleagues on the countries that enjoy natural resources; in other words, the countries enjoying resources that have a democratic order did not face resource curse and could manage to use their resources in line with their economic growth.

Establishment and development of industrial husbandry in Kerman province have directed a great deal of provincial capitals toward this industry in recent years. Therefore, it is a must that efficiency of these production units is studied so that the situation of capital movement toward such units could be duly analyzed in the province. A helpful criterion to be employed is the analysis of production units’ efficiency. This article tries to study the technical, allocation and economic efficiencies of producers of cow milk and sheep milk in Kerman province with the aim of measuring the efficiency of this activity in the province. This study uses “Data Envelopment Analysis” method. The data was collected from 140 cow milk producers and 140 sheep milk producers. According to the results, the average technical, allocation and economic efficiencies for sheep milk producers were 57.6, 42.7 and 24.52 respectively while those of cow milk producers were 46.7, 39.78 and 18.58 respectively.