نشریه پژوهش های اقتصاد صنعتی
پیاپی 25 (پاییز 1402)

The present research has investigated the job duration of the workforce employed in the manufacturing industries of Yazd province and the factors influencing it, with an emphasis on gender. According to the registration of job profiles and records of the workforce of Yazd province in the aggregate database of social security organization since 2011, the studied period is considered from 2011 to 2021. Cox''s proportional hazard model estimation shows that in multivariate analysis, gender does not have a significant effect on the job duration, but in univariate analysis, it has a significant effect, and being female increases the hazard ratio. Also, being married and increasing the dependents of workers (takaful) reduces the hazard ratio. The effect of wage on the job duration in univariate and multivariate cases is insignificant but contradictory. Being an immigrant and the unemployment rate increases the hazard ratio, and industries with low and high technology levels have a higher hazard ratio than the other two groups, i.e. industries with medium-low and medium-high technology levels. Finally, the research results show that the job duration in the labor market of Yazd province is influenced by the unemployment rate more than it is influenced by gender as an individual characteristic. Therefore, increasing the job stability of different subgroups of society, including women, and reducing the unemployment rate requires attention to macroeconomic variables and the general conditions of the country''s economy.

The petrochemical industry is one of the parent and job-creating industries in Iran, which can play a fundamental role in ‎the country's growth and development and industrial policies. Petrochemical is one of the sectors that has the most ‎capabilities in product diversity, high profitability, broad consumer markets, high employment, higher capital return rate ‎compared to other manufacturing industries, and more effective in moving towards competitive and export-oriented ‎products in the industry sector of the country. It performs in the industry sector of the country. In Iran, due to the existence ‎of huge reserves of oil and gas on the one hand, and the existence of specialized and experienced human capital on the ‎other hand, and also due to the role of petrochemical industries in the production of other manufacturing industries, which ‎shows the broad backward and forward relations of this industry with the other industries of the country; that this industry ‎can be given special attention as the driving force of the country's industries. Also, the current scale of the firms of the ‎country's petrochemical industries does not allow them to play an effective role in the global markets. Hence, organizing ‎these firms and encouraging them to merge can be used as economies of scale to boost the power of competitiveness and reduce their costs. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze of merging of the country's petrochemical industries ‎using the data and information of 2009-21 and the horizontal merging method. The results show that the petrochemical ‎industries are capable to merge by using different merging and concentration indices, such as the four-firm, eight-firm ‎concentration indices, and the Herfindahl-Hersheiman index.

The Average share of the rail industry of freight The Average share of the rail industry of freight transportation for the last two decades is 11.5 percent and its average commercial speed is less than 4 km per hour. Freight trains departures and arrival times are not planned and predictable. In addition, there is a weak correspondence between railway infrastructure and the demand for rail freight transportation. If we consider these as an indicator of the not somehow desirable performance of rail freight transportation in Iran, then asking about the challenges of rail freight and its development strategies becomes relevant. Dealing with such issues is the main purpose of this paper. Challenges and strategies have been derived from deep interviews with the experts, according to the grounded theory. The results show that the improvement of rail freight transportation industry performance depends on (1) Separation of responsibility of regulatory, arbitration, and policy making from the Railways of the Islamic Republic of Iran (RAI); (2) Managing RAI based on commercial logic and giving full responsibility for building the infrastructure and keeping it available; (3) Administration of movement, issuing bills of lading, granting licenses, setting timetables, and determining access rights based on the rules of the independent regulatory body, and (4) Considering full authority and responsibility in train management for freight companies.

The main aim of this article is to provide a model for compiling and evaluating the various investment projects’ feasibility reports. For this purpose, based on global up-to-date researches, the experience of international organizations, governments, financial actors, and project managers from all over the world, a standard model including seven steps (first, description of the context, second, the definition of objectives, third, identification of the project, fourth, technical feasibility and environmental sustainability, fifth, financial analysis, sixth, economic analysis, and seventh, risk assessment) is introduced and explained to compile and evaluate investment projects cost-benefit analysis reports. Surveys show that the main focus of internal studies has been on the sectors or projects specific for investment, and due to the specific sector-project view, providing a comprehensive guideline for compiling and evaluating economic feasibility reports of projects has not been on the agenda. The model presented in this research is a general model that is not specific to a particular project or economic sector and can be used for all types of government or private projects at different national, regional, and international levels. Also, in the internal studies, the fundamental principles of cost-benefit analysis have been paid less attention, hence, it is recommended to rely on the current research for writing and evaluating economic evaluation reports and the feasibility analysis of various investment projects.

This study has investigated the reaction of the multidisciplinary industry in the capital market to the economic sanctions, the global price of commodities, and the macroeconomic variables of the exchange rate and inflation rate. In this study, using the autoregressive distributed lag approach (ARDL) with monthly data during the period of 2008-2021, the dynamic model of the research has been estimated. Also, using the autoregressive distributed lag bounds test, the long-term relationship between the price index of the multidisciplinary industry and the independent variables of the research has been examined. The long-term coefficients show that the price index of the multidisciplinary industry is positively influenced by the global commodities price index and the exchange rate and negatively influenced by the economic sanctions and inflation rate. The results of the error correction mechanism show that the long-term relationship of the model is real and every year 63% of the deviation from the path is corrected in the long term.

The existence of uncertain conditions affects the confidence level of investors, which leads to a change in approach from rational to behavioral, judgments based on subjective perceptions, non-scientific information,  rumors, and prevailing market conditions, and it causes blindly following by some market activists, which is called herd behavior.  In the present study, the presence or absence of herding behavior of investors of industrial companies in the Tehran Stock Exchange is investigated. This research based on the data of the Tehran Stock Exchange from July 2018 to July 2021 and by considering various factors such as institutional investment, fundamental factors, and factors with lag as past trends through a regression equation, the presence or absence of herding behavior of investors evaluates. The results showed that there was herding behavior during the study period. However, by adding a) fundamental factors of variables such as P/E ratio, share turnover, capital of market, and market liquidity b) calculation of external factors such as political instability, global financial crisis, and oil price fluctuations, and c) Lagged effects, the intensity of herding behavior with a low change is observed. However, the key and final finding indicates the existence of herding behavior from July 2018 to July 2021, which is exactly consistent with what was formed in the Tehran stock market during this period.  In other words, investors blindly follow the actions of a group of people in the market irrationally and without paying attention to personal information or following scientific principles about a specific investment or decision. The feelings transmitted among people due to emotional behavior of entering the stock market affect their decision or it can be deliberative, conscious, and controlled in which social norms affect their decisions.