نشریه اقتصاد شهری
سال چهارم شماره 2 (پاییز و زمستان 1398)

These days the importance of art and culture as a necessary capital for growth and development has been highly recognized and the need for the economy to find new areas of investment for generating income, creating jobs and etc. has made many developing and developed countries to strive to make full use of their resources available for reaching sustainable development. Regarding this, by investing on their cultural resources, different countries try to promote the economic, social and political development. On the path to national development, addressing cities and taking advantage of the cities opportunities to achieve urban development is a critical need. Optimal utilization of cultural resources to develop cities requires careful planning. Cultural planning, as the interconnected chapter of the three disciplines of cultural economics, urban economics and urban planning, is considered to be a required tool for utilizing cultural resources for development. In order to design an optimal development plan we need to have a complete and exact understanding of the current situation. Regarding this, evaluating our performance in utilizing the cultural resources is the first step for any cultural development plan. Among the many existing criteria for cultural development trends of regions, cultural vitality is the most comprehensive one, which uses a combination of three indicators including:1) the presence of opportunities for cultural participation; 2) cultural participation; and 3) support for culture, and 54 variables to reflect the situation of a community in the production, dissemination and support for art and culture as basis of cultural capital as well as cultural, economic, and social development. The present study aims to determine cultural vitality in the metropolitan city of Isfahan. The study, the study is a practical and a descriptive-analytical research in terms of the purpose and method. The required data for evaluating cultural vitality and its three indicators were directly obtained from the relevant organizations and statistical calendars. In line with the goal of this investigation, the data were standardized using statistical procedures including averages and standard deviation in order to obtain the same unit of different variables and data and prevent data bias. Finally, using simple average of the variables, the main sub-indicators were calculated and using the average of the main three sub-indicators, cultural vitality was measured through the years 1392-1395 (March 21, 2013 - March 21, 2016). According to the obtained results cultural vitality, as a whole, has been increased in Isfahan during this period with a change from -0.832 in 1392 to 0.502 in 1395. However, regarding the "Presence of Opportunities for Cultural Participation" indicator, Isfahan has experienced a decline.

The distribution of households’ income and expenditure is one of the economic indicators of differences between provinces. Infact one of the goals of development programs in each country is to eliminate divergences between the provinces and realizing a balanced growth and development across the country. Hence, raising the level of growth in regions with lower than average growth level is necessary for the realization of development goals. The purpose of this study is to examine the convergence of urban household expenditures in the provinces of Iran during the years 1379-1394. Fot this purpose, the conditional convergence model and spatial econometric method of generalized moments have been used. The results of the study indicate that conditional beta convergence exists for the urban households’ expenditure and the rate of convergence of the provinces is 0.07%. In conditional convergence, some other explanatory variables are also considered and according the results the effect of economic growth, inflation and human capital on the convergence of the urban households’ expenditure is negative, while the population has had a positive effect on it.

Tourism today has affected food, and this can lead to the formation of a supportive environment and building basic infrastructures, and finally entrepreneurship development. Gastronomy tourism is a kind of tourism that is attractive for visitors from different parts of the world with different cultures who are ready to experience new cultures, traditions and food. Regarding this, our study tries to link the economic regeneration environment in the city of Zanjan to gastronomy tourism, using Zanjan annual Aash (Iranian soup) Festival. This applied study is conducted by descriptive-analytical method using cross-sectional data of the year 1398 and SPSS and Amos softwares. The findings indicate that the most influential factor for gastronomy tourism induced economic regeneration, is the development of infrastructures and government support for the private sector, people and entrepreneurs. Therefore the government should provide a space that prepares the conditions for the growth of startups. In fact providing infrastructure by the government can help startups and new businesses to be formed and grow in such a space. Finally, the results of this study can help urban tourism planners to have a better understanding of the barriers of economic recgeneration of the city and to make the necessary decisions and actions to address these barriers.

Economists believe that free trade with the export of domestic goods and the import of goods from abroad increases the welfare of the countries. Therefore, improving trade is one of the major economic goals of any country, and free zones are developed in line with the development of exports and imports, the acquisition of currency revenues, and the establishment of a systematic link between the national economy and the global economy. This research seeks to investigate the effect of exchange rate, as an effective variable on international trade, in the form of a J-curve on trade in trade-based cities of Iran. Therefore, this effect is estimated for the trade-based cities of Kish, Qeshm, Chabahar, Anzali, Arvand, and Aras during the 2005-2017 period, using a PANEL ARDL. The results indicate that the effect of the exchange rate on exports is not significant in the short term, but in the long run the effects is significant (58.02). This effect on imports is significant and 565.05 in the short term and 381.1 in the long term. Therefore, although the short-term and long-term effects of the exchange rate on exports, imports and the trade balance of these cities are positive, but the long run the effect of the exchange rate on exports and trade balance is stronger than its effect on the imports. So this evidence confirms the existence of a j-curve in Iran's trade-based cities in the long run. Thus, the realization of the exchange rate, in long term, can ultimately encourage the exports and reduce the dependence on the, and thus improve the trade balance of the cities. Therefore, the findings of this study can be a useful for economic decision makers and policy makers in managing coastal cities.

Gender wage discrimination in the labor market can lead to an inefficient allocation of human resources and have negative effects on economic growth. Due to provincial gender pay gaps (GPG), identification of the principal determinants of wage differentials between males and females is an important phase in analyzing the labor market. Using micro-data of urban household income and expenditure survey in 2017, this study has decomposed the GPG in five major regions in the Iranian labor market to determine the role of specific regional characteristics. For this purpose, we use the Neumark decomposition approach, which is an extended form of Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition. The results show that the gender pay gap exists in all regions on behalf of males. Among all regions, except region 2, more than 80 percent of the gender wage gap has origin in labor forces attainments especially including human capital and experience, and the remaining part is attributed to discrimination. While in region 2, labor force attainments and discrimination have shaped the gender wage gap equally.

This research has been performed to identify and rank the most important methods of stable procurement of municipal by using techniques of diversity measure of decision making in Hamadan municipality. Research statistical population has been included 25 people of managers and experts of Hamadan Municipality. At first, Delphi questionnaire was distributed among experts and measures and methods of stable income procurement were screened. The next step, while distributing double comparisons questionnaire and, by using the technique of phase hierarchical analysis, research measures were weighted. Among the measures, according to the present rules, a normal weight of 0.239 has been enjoyed the most priority. Finally, TOPSIS questionnaire was distributed among experts to procure municipal stable income. Regarding results from the fuzzy Topsis technique, taxes on buildings and lands with the weight of 0.905 are placed at the priority, taxes on the work permit and sales with the weight of 0.673 are placed at the second priority, according to municipal rules donations, and properties with the weight of 0.572 are placed at the third priority.