فصلنامه تحقیقات اقتصادی
پیاپی 93 (زمستان 1389)

This research follows two aims in case of the Iranian economy. First, study of the presence of inflation persistency, and second, looking for an optimal monetary policy rule. Results show that inflation in the economy of Iran is persistent, in which, short-term and long-term effects of monetary policy should be considered. For this purpose, a loss function for the central bank with arguments of inflation, output gap and the money supply growth, subject to the demand and Phillips curves, is minimized. The importance of this issue is that by expansionary monetary policy, the economic growth in the short-term can be increased with high inflation bias. On the other hand, by contraction monetary policy, benefits gained in the form of inflation reduction at the cost of lower short-term growth. Therefore, balancing among costs and benefits of inflation targeting policy with regard to the output stability is crucial, as it is optimal for the central bank to allow for a high degree of policy gradualism or money supply smoothing.

Return and volatility spillovers are important for portfolio selection, asset valuation and market efficiency investigation. Using a VAR-BEKK framework model, this paper investigates return and volatility spillover effects between three size-sorted equity indices in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). Although daily return of large stocks leads small stocks (lead-lag effect), there wasn’t any spillover effect in monthly and seasonal returns and volatilities. These results are against evidence of volatility spillovers in many stock markets that may be due to trading limits such as price limit and existence of base volume in TSE.

The main purpose of this paper is theoretically to design the optimal intervention in the foreign exchange market in Iran, which has not been investigated by previous studies. The economic fundamentals are strongly affected by the optimal foreign exchange intervention, the consistency of foreign exchange intervention with other policies and political authoritie's beliefs about the intervention as a dependent policy instrument. The used approach in this paper is a nonlinear dynamic continuous-time stochastic model. The result shows that the optimal foreign exchange intervention depends on the economic objectives of policy authorities, current and expected future exchange rate.

The Certainty assumption that is used in economic analysis, althouth is easier in analysis, may be but not logical because in most projects time is playing a key role. In this time horizon the amount of income and future costs affecting by factors that are not managable by investors and can not to be forecasted. Therefore in practice usually there is a gap between forecased and real variables. In risk and uncertainty condition the results of economic analysis could be altered by a few changes in uncertain parameter. In this paper, the formulas for the analyses of fuzzy present value, fuzzy equivalent uniform annual value and fuzzy benefit–cost ratio are developed given some numeric examples. This paper one of the few researches which used a model for economic evaluation of projects with fuzzy logic.

Government policies had been provided Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) multiplier entry basis in Iran in two late decade with effect on FDI absorbency effective ingredient. In this study, in order to set government policies effects outlook on the future situation of FDI supply in Iran in two late decade, two forms of non-linear FDI supply functions has been simulated, by using direction line of effective macro economic indices on FDI supply. In other words, efficiency of the FDI supply estimation of Iran with use of Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm has been improved. ACO-based FDI supply Simulation (ACOFDISS) model has been developed, by using market scale indicator, human capital indicator, natural resources access indicator and in frastructure indicator variables. In this article one of the suggestive equations is exponential and the second one is quadratic. In FDI supply function, the quadratic form provides better results in Simulation and description FDI supply process in Iran and it can be used in FDI supply prediction with upper prediction standards.

In very recent papers Asmild et al. (2003) and Halved et al. (2004) have suggested an alternative nonparametric frontier approach namely multi-directional inefficiency analysis (MEA) to estimate the performance efficiency. MEA has many advantages over Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) as the standard nonparametric frontier method. This index chooses the benchmark points as the proportional improvement to maximal possible reduction in each input dimension separately rather than the benchmark selection in DEA model as the improvement in proportion to current inputs allocation. Therefore MEA could provide more reliable efficiency measures. The paper provides the first efficiency study over banking industry applying multi-directional efficiency analysis for a dataset of Iranian banking system over 2004-2007. The findings of this paper support Holvad et al. (2004) in which DEA models over-underestimate the input excesses. Moreover, measuring the sizes and directions of potential improvement for each input separately across the banks provides useful information from managerial and policy implications point of view. One of the most interesting points of these findings perhaps is that for the Iranian sampled banks, generally, labour force, on average, accounts for the largest proportion of excess costs. Thus, the labour reduction has the first priority in the path of efficiency improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of financial liberalization on exchange rate volatilities of the selected developing countries, which are now known as liberalizing countries. Thus we test the hypothesis in which financial liberalization effect exchange rate volatilities in 43 selected developing countries during 1996-2005. Accordingly, a regression model of exchange rate volatility has been specified and estimated based upon employing fixed effects method. The results show that an index of capital control, which has been considered as a proxy of financial liberalization, has not affected exchange rate volatility indicating an ambiguous role of capital control in exchange rate volatilities, the implication is that appropriate and strategic financial liberalization can adjust volatilities of exchange rates in these countries.

Milton Friedman’s seminal article, “Methodology of Positive Economics”, is one of the most important and contentious works ever been discussed within the realm of economic methodology. In this article, on the basis of an instrumentalist approach to the nature of theorizing, Friedman declares the tenets of positive economics, and in this vein, he professes his disputable doctrine about “unrealistic assumptions” as the core of his view. In this article, we try to discuss over some logical and theoretical defects in Friedman’s article which essentially weakens his supportive arguments about his views (internal critique); furthermore, in the light of Lakatos’ epistemological framework, we take into consideration the epistemological status of Friedman’s predectivist instrumentalism (external critique) and we reach this conclusion that his approach is degenerating in Lakatosian term.

In this paper, asymmetric effects of exchange rate fluctuation (according to positive and negative shocks) on real output were investigated. In the meantime, the study of behaviour of real output growth in Iran’s economy over the period 1338-1386 was done. In specification of the output growth equation, in spite of considering positive and negative shocks of exchange rate, the effects of other factors (control variables) including both factors of the supply side (e.g. oil revenues and investment) and factors of the demand side (e.g. government spending) were considered. The results show that negative shocks have much more effects on reduction of economic growth compared to positive shocks, which was in a great agreement with the main hypothesis at this study. In fact, negative shocks of real exchange rate (appreciation of the domestic currency) decrease the economic growth, while positive shocks of exchange rate don’t show similar effects on output and can’t recover output to the initial level. In addition, by using nonlinear models of STR and studying of relationships between output and political variables, it can be concluded that real output growth in Iran economy with respect to different levels at government spending growth shows a nonlinear behaviour. The Variables of negative shocks of exchange rate, ratio investment to output, government spending and monetary inequilibrium in low regime of government spending have important effects on economic growth, but in high regime effects of the mentioned variables decrease in a larch scale.

Housing market in Iran got out of recession in year 1384 and turn into abnormal growth. But following the housing price growth, which continued until 1386, it deals with the slowdown of the housing market and stable prices in the spring of 1387. Afterward, decreasing trend in housing prices continued in the summer, in spite of increase in global housing prices. In this paper, it is investigated that whether these prices increases rooted in fundamental economic factors or is caused by bubbles. In this study, monetary policy transmission mechanism is assumed in a linear model by rational expectations. Using GMM and a forward-looking New-Keynesian model for a closed economy, the real interest rate effect on housing real return has been discussed in period 1 / 1380 to 6 / 1387. The results indicate that during this period, real interest rates has negative effect and the lag of housing real return and GDP have positive effect on housing real return.