فهرست مطالب j. shahraki

The consumption of households and its structure has an important role in the rate of energy consumption and related air pollutant emissions. This study investigates the effect of changes in the structure of consumption in urban and rural areas on the emission of three main energy-related air pollutants (CO2, SO2, and NOX) in Iran during 2001-2011. To this aim, the environmentally extended input-output tables and structural decomposition analysis (SDA) were used. As the contribution of this study, the consumption of households is decomposed into two factors: total consumption and consumption structure. The results revealed that the changes in consumption structure in rural and urban areas increased the emission of all three air pollutants. The effect of changes in total consumption in both urban and rural areas outweighs the effect of changes in consumption structure. The negative environmental impact of urban households is worse than rural ones. The results at sectoral level showed that the changes in urban consumption structure had the main effect on CO2 emission in “water, gas and electricity” (135.68 Mt CO2), “chemical and plastics industry” (30.13 Mt CO2), and “food, clothing and textiles industry” (6.41 Mt CO2) whilst the changes in rural consumption structure had the main effect on CO2 emission in “water, gas and electricity” (25.39 Mt CO2), “chemical and plastics industry” (19.98 Mt CO2), and “food, clothing and textiles industry” (1.74 Mt CO2).

Over the past three decades, due to population growth, economic growth and energy consumption, environmental hazards have increased. Iran is a growing country and one of the examples of growth patterns with pressure on natural resources. Therefore, it is very important to study the environmental impacts of natural resources consumption and development in Iran. This study aimed at optimizing the agricultural policies with the orientation of environment conservation and improved economic productivity through building a two-level multi-objective optimization model as well as evaluating the optimal set of solutions obtained from two policy tools of 'increase in price of inputs' and 'introduction of taxes on fertilizer consumption'. This research was conducted as a case study in agricultural sector of Khomein Plain in Iran and during the 2015-2016 cropping year. The 'Pareto-optimal' set of answers obtained from the evaluation of the concerned policies showed that cultivars including beans and onions resulted in higher yields and lower fertilizer consumption than the other optimal cultivar patterns. Also, changing the cropping pattern to the proposed products would lead to an increase in water use productivity by 162 percent and a 29 percent reduction in the average consumed fertilizer while reducing the soil erosion by 33 percent. Given the study results, the bean and onion products are recommended to be used in the composition of farmers' cultivation pattern.

In the development process of the countries, the wetlands play a significant role in people’s well-being by providing the goods and services that are used directly and indirectly. Some examples of these goods include recreational use (as non-consumable values), harvested meat (as direct consumable values), carbon uptake, oxygen generation, water conservation, and soil retention (as indirect consumable values). In addition to consumption values, wetlands have other values too; i.e. the money paid by people to protect the wetlands for future use, for next generations and for their being, no matter if they are used or not used. These non-consumable values are called protection values, too. The present work estimated the value of goods and services of Hamoon wetland ecosystem in the form of biodiversity function in order to economically evaluate the drought damages to Hamoon wetland in 2015. The data needed to estimate the value of these functions were collected by a questionnaire. The biodiversity protection value of Hamoon wetland as the protection value of its forest ecosystem was estimated by contingent valuation method using the data collected from 450 people living in the rural areas surrounding the wetland. The results show that the value of protection of the Hamoon wetland biodiversity is 333.75 billion IRR and the expected WTP to protect its wildlife is 35542.74 IRR per family per year.

In this study, the water content that is allocated for agricultural productions wasanalyzed using stochastic dynamic programming. The technical coefficients used in thestudy referred to the agricultural years, 2013-2014. They were obtained through the useof simple random sampling of 250 farmers in the region for crops like wheat, barley,melon, watermelon, and ruby grapes under the scenarios of drought and normal andwater that is required in the most sensitive growth stages. Production function and profitfunction were obtained from the yield-water-product function of crops using Eviewssoftware. Expected net profit of the system and optimal allocation of water were alsocalculated based on the GAMS economic analysis software. Results of the modelindicates a reduction in wheat, barley, melon and watermelon production area undercultivation while at the same time an increase in ruby grapes cultivation areas underoptimal conditions. The results showed that the cultivation of the ruby grape was thebest product with the highest expected profit in normal and drought conditions. Ingeneral, when the expected value of net profit is positive, managers would actoptimistically and they would promise the optimal level of water allocated to thefarmers.

The main objective of the current study was to estimate the demand function forwater in the industrial sector of Zahedan city based on the methodology of dualitypremise. To this end, the trans-log cost function which is considered as a morerobust framework for the analysis of production relationships was utilized toestimate the demand function of water in the industrial sector instead of usingconventional production methods. This is an applied survey in which the trans-logcost function and the cost share equations using Iterative Seemingly UnrelatedRegressions (ISUR) approach. After the estimation of the model, the productioninfrastructure technologies, the substitution and price elasticity were calculatedand homothetic, constant return to scale and Cob-Douglas hypotheses for theproduction function were tested using Eviews software. The data of the study referto 30 active production units located in the industrial clusters of the Zahedan cityduring the period from 2011 to 2012. Data were collected through questionnaires.The determination coefficient of the model was equal to 97 percent whichindicated the goodness of fit. On the other hand, the results of the modelestimation represented water as a non-elastic commodity because the priceelasticity calculated for water was less than 1 (-0.07). Moreover, the calculatedvalues for Allen-Uzawa and Morishima elasticities indicated a strong substitutionrelationship between water as a production input and machinery (6.69) andbuilding (1.30) inputs. On the other hand, there was a weak substitution effectbetween water and land inputs (0.65) and a complementary relationship existedbetween water and labor inputs (-0.43). However, it should be mentioned that thehomotheticity, constant returns to scale, and the Cob-Dagoulas form of the costfunction hypotheses were rejected based on the Maximum Likelihood Ratio(Wald-Statistic).

The purpose of this study is to assess the performance of shrimp cooperatives and non-cooperatives in Guatr district in Chabahar city of Sistan and Baluchistan province. To achieve the objective of study, profitability and efficiency indices were used. Data were collected from 25 shrimp farms. Technical efficiency was estimated by BCC and super efficiency models. The results of study revealed that all farms made profit. Moreover, the ranking of super efficiency models showed significant differences among efficiency levels of farms. Low level of efficiency was mainly related to poor management and rate of inputs utilization. Therefore, providing intensive extension services was recommended.