عبدالناصر همتی

With the emergence of private digital currencies and the decreasing use of cash, the discussion about the issuance of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) among central banks has gained momentum. Considering the interest of central banks worldwide in CBDC, we endeavored to analyze other countries' initiatives in introducing CBDC through a comparative analysis method, aiming to examine its impact on monetary policies, improving central bank supervision, and financial stability. For this purpose, we considered the most probable design of CBDC that central banks are inclined to adopt. The results indicate that the issuance of CBDC, with the condition of appropriate design and necessary actions by the central bank, not only does not lead to the disintermediation of banks but can also contribute to its improvement. Monetary policy is reinforced with the presence of CBDC, expanding the space for monetary policies through the introduction of new tools such as helicopter money, smart contracts, and the implementation of negative interest rates. In general, central bank digital currency, due to its financial inclusion and the new source of data it provides to the central bank, contributes to financial stability and the improvement of the central bank.

The theory of relative purchasing power parity to determine the long-run trend of the exchange rate in Iran is quite sensitive to the base year selection. So, by changing the base year, trends with a level difference of several hundred percent are obtained. It means that the long-run trend of the real exchange rate is not at a constant level. In other words, contrary to the PPP theory, the real exchange rate trend is not stationary. Empirical studies consider the non-stationary change in terms of trade resulting from the changes in the real oil price as one of the reasons. This study examines the nexus between the real exchange rate and terms of trade in Iran from 1960 to 2020, using the autoregressive distributed lag approach to cointegration as the estimation method. We find that higher terms of trade lead to a decline in the actual exchange rate and vice versa. The results indicate a long-run relationship, which means that the condition needed to estimate the long-term trend of the exchange rate in Iran is to have the same terms of trade in the base year.

This paper investigates the relative contributions of nominal exchange rates and relative price adjustments toward PPP in a VECM framework in Iran. In conducting empirical tests, annual time series data were used covering the period of 1357 to 1401. The cointegration test indicates the existence of a long-run cointegrating relationship between the nominal exchange rate and relative price. Also, the adjustment speed coefficient of the real exchange rate resulting from the difference in the adjustment speeds of the variables of the VECM model is around -0/2. This value indicates the slow adjustment process in such a way that it is expected that 80% of the current period's deviation from purchasing power parity will remain for the next year. On the other hand, the evidence from impulse response functions shows that relative price shocks lead to much longer real exchange rate deviations than nominal exchange rate shocks. Also, the nominal exchange rate in response to the relative price impulse is slowly on its long-term equilibrium path; While the relative price reacts to the impulse of the nominal exchange rate, it is placed on the path of its long-term equilibrium at a faster rate. In general, it can be said that to establish purchasing power parity, the relative price will play a more important role than the nominal exchange rate. Thus, Iranian policymakers must pay attention to price stabilization and the reduction of high inflation rates through appropriate macroeconomic policy.

In regard to the customers who are willing to participate in stock market and insurance market simultaneously، insurance companies introduced equity linked insurance contracts. Equity linked life insurance contracts is a life insurance policy، in which all or some part of premium allocated to a separate account that will be invested in a particular stock or a portfolio. If the portfolio has a positive return، the death benefit increases and if yields are bad، death benefits should be reduced، naturally. In this paper the feasibility of providing equity linked insurance in Iran''s insurance market is investigated. For this purpose، analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is used by TELOS method. According to experts، equity linked life insurance is feasible and Guaranteed Minimum Maturity Benefit (GMMB) is the most preferable product in equity linked life insurance.

Inadequate people awareness about Insurance services is one of the most important factors of underdevelopement of Iran insurance industry. Because insurance services aren’t objective and familiarity of people with them requires presenting comprehensive data, so professional advertising campaigns of insurance companies is so helpful. Effective advertising policymaking in insurance industry can increase insurance penetration rate and in the result, economic and social security of the society will be improved. Identifying and approving dimensions of ‘model of effective advertising policymaking’ and the relations among these dimensions are main objectives of this research. Research method is based on Survey, and questionnaire has been used for data collection. Pearson correlation test, Kruskal-Wallis test, Multidimensional Scaling, Quadratic Assignment Procedure Correlation (QAP) and Cluster Analysis have been used for analyzing data and approving model dimensions and relations. Research results, have approved six dimensions of effective advertising policymaking model and have revised relations among dimensions of primary and conceptual model of research.

In recent years, the issue of global water scarcity has attracted increasing attention within academia, non-governmental organizations and as well as within the media. The aim of this paper is to ascertain whether there is a systematic relationship between agriculture water use and income, and particularly whether an inverted U-shaped relationship exists, as has been found for other resources and for pollutants through EKC hypothesis. Using a new cross section data set of agriculture water use for 163 countries in the world, signs of such a relationship has become evident, suggesting that agriculture water use may benefit from composition and technique effects opposite scale effects’. Some models have used into original and logarithmic expressions by line, quadratics and cubic functions to estimate the relationship between agriculture water use and income. The “turning point” level as agriculture water use and income relationship is estimated as $5074. According to the article’s results, the efficiency of water use in the agriculture sector, population and socioeconomic policies has an important role in affecting onagriculture water use.

The paper investigates the sources of real and nominal exchange rate movements in Iran by decomposing real exchange rate movements into those attributable to real and nominal shocks. Since the real exchange rate is related to the relative price of domestic goods in terms of foreign goods, it is important to know to what extent it is influenced by real shocks versus nominal shocks. Quarterly data from the period 1369:01 to 1387:02 were utilized in this study. Using a popular structural VAR model and assuming long-run neutrality of nominal shocks, we find that real shocks dominate nominal shocks in explaining real exchange rate movements in Iran. On the other hand, variance decompositions show that nominal shocks explain about 53 percent of nominal exchange rate movements in the short run and about 39 percent in the long run. Our results imply that it is important to minimize nominal shock by following a stable monetary policy in order to achieve real exchange rate stability, at least, in the short run. Our results also imply that given the importance of real shocks in explaining exchange rate changes, in order to improve the competitiveness of the economy through a real exchange rate policy, the government needs to focus on the real side of the economy, such as improving efficiency and productivity.

This paper studied the short-run restrictions by a simple aggregate demand–aggregate supply model to identify structural shocks. Combined with the Blanchard-Quah restriction, it allowed estimation of the slope of the aggregate supply curve, the variances of structural demand and supply shocks and the extent to which structural demand and supply shocks are correlated, are estimated. Quarterly data for the period 1368:1-1385:3 were utilized in this study. This paper found that the demand and supply shocks were weakly correlated. On the other hand, the point estimate of the output-inflation tradeoff parameter, which is the slope of the short-run aggregate supply curve in the model, implies that the immediate effect on output of a structural supply shock is larger than that of an equal-sized structural demand shock. The variance decompositions also indicated that with causality from demand to supply, 25% of the short-run variation in output and nearly 9% of the long-run variation in output was the result of the structural supply shock.