Journal of Economic Modeling Research

    The number of factors affecting total factor productivity has been increasing far from those which considered in growth models. So, institutional factors have been attracting strong attention of researchers. This paper aims at investigating the effects of these institutional factors together with traditional factors on TFP growth during 1971-2007.

  For this purpose, we present a State-Space model. Using this approach, TFP has been regarded as a latent variable and in the state equation, we introduced some exogenous variables. Some endogenous variables which were mainly measures of institutional factors have been specified as proxies. Our result show that the introduced measures of institutions such as governance(political stability and accountability) institutions and degree of government intervention together with an older and known institutional factors, such as macroeconomic instability, have significant effects on TFP growth. In addition, the residuals from state-space model (either deterministic or stochastic) were different from the residuals of other models.

A standard assumption in the empirical literature is that exchange rate pass-through is both linear and symmetric. This implies that size (large-versus-small exchange rate changes) and direction (currency appreciations-versus-depreciations) have similar effects. In this paper these assumptions have investigated for Iran's export prices. So, this paper examines the asymmetric exchange rate pass-through to the monthly import price index in Iran during 1997:1–2010:9. Therefore positive and negative exchange rate shocks have been separated using Mork Criteria and large and small exchange rate changes by determining a threshold. The results show that the response of export prices to currency appreciation and depreciation is asymmetric. So, the negative exchange rate shocks have a greater effect on the export prices than the positive exchange rate shocks. According to our estimation results, there is a threshold at 1.3% of monthly changes in exchange rate of Iran and also export prices react asymmetrically to exchange rate at around this threshold. If both direction and size effects are considered, we find that export prices respond asymmetrically to large and small appreciations and depreciations.

Compared to private firms, public companies generally have excess labor force. During the privatization process and conversion of a public enterpriseto a private enterprise, new employers tend to adjust their labor force in order to reduce ongoing costsand improve the company's economic goals.In order to persuade the employees to accept voluntary retirement and leave the firm, these firmsmay offer a reward to the employees that are eligible for optional retirement but are not eligible to mandatory retirement. Employees tend to receive the highest possible premium and in contrast the firm is willing to pay employees the minimum possible premium. In this paper, we consider the options facing employer and employee through dynamic games with complete information. Games between employee and employer was shown in the form of an extensive game.Minimum premium required to accept the optional retirement was calculated using subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE) and the effect of ceiling premium has been studied on minimum premium. The calculations show that the reductions in mandatory retirement age, the retirement benefits from social security organizations, expected interest rate and the maximum years of service and an increase in employee's age and her years of service lead to a reduction in the minimum premium required to accept the optional retirement. Moreover, due to lower mandatory retirement age for women than men in many countries, women accept optional retirement with lower premium. The proposed ceiling premium will also cause to refuseoptional retirement from the part of the workers with high salary, young and lownumber of years of service.