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Foreign exchange (FX) markets play a significant role in the global financial market, so that it comprises 40% of total global e-commerce values. However, reports show a 90% loss of entire investment of traders in this market usually after six to 12 months after entrance. This paper analyzes losing values of the majority of traders theoretically and empirically. Furthermore, by ignoring spread of broker and existence of inflation, it is shown that the FX market is a repeating zero-sum game. So, by developing a theoretical model in a framework of the Probability Theory, we have shown that probability of a loss in the FX market is quite high. Results show that the loss of the majority of trade occurs undoubtedly. Using two major currency pair data: Euro-Yen (EURJPY) and Euro-Dollar (EURUSD) in a daily duration in 2009 and 2010, we show that probability of failure (loss) cannot be less than 90%. We also showed the fact that, the larger number of transactions, the higher percentage of traders’ losses. The higher probability of loss also depends directly on the volatility of exchange rate and higher rates of spread and leverage.

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The magnitude of economic growth depends on the growth and investment in key economic sectors. Thus, one important goal of policy makers and economic planners in any society is to identify key economic sectors. This paper aims at identifying these sectors in Iranian economy using stochastic input-output analysis. Stochastic analysis is used to investigate how the inherent imprecision affects the concomitant key sector analysis in case of utilizing aggregated data. The analysis is based on Iranian input-output table for the year 2001, using distance estimation and Monte Carlo simulation. Results of the non-stochastic approach indicate that among 25 economic sectors in aggregated input-output table, six sector-groups are the key sectors while, in non-aggregated input-output table with 99 sectors, 13 sector-groups can be identified as key sectors. Finally the suggestion is that to identify key economic sectors the non-aggregated input-output table should be used.

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Since the liquidity shortage has some undesirable consequences for banks, the evaluation of different strategies of providing liquidity is very important. In normal market conditions, there are plenty of adjustment strategies available for banks which allow them to have higher liquid assets when they face higher payment obligations. This paper mainly focuses on three strategies of liquidity management in country's banking system in above conditions. The main aim of current paper is to test three strategies of liquidity management based on the recommendations of Basel Committee in the condition of increasing the payment obligations of the banking network, by applying Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) method. We used the data from 20 Iranian commercial banks for the period 2001-2009. Results show that there is a positive relationship between payment obligations and securities stock growth rates and also between payment obligations and repayments of loans growth rates. However there is a diverse relation between payment obligations and long-term loans growth rates.

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Although fossil fuels consumption may causes to rapid economic growth, but due to related pollutants and its consequences, the world has suffered from climate changes. Moreover, fossil fuel resources such as petroleum, gas, coal and uranium are being exhausted rapidly in the last decades. Therefore, seeking an appropriate as well as low-cost alternative for the above-mentioned energy carriers is one of the most important research topics. Regarding this situation, the utilization of renewable energy sources especially solar and wind energies is very important. In this study, the social welfare is maximized and optimal trajectory of solar and wind energy substitution is derived by using an optimal control approach. The model is solved empirically by genetic algorithm using MATLAB software. The results show that assuming social discount rate of 5% and no reduction in solar and wind energy conversion cost during next years, transition from fossil energy to solar and wind energy must occur in 2089 while assuming a 50 % reduction in solar and wind energy conversion cost in every 10 years period, this transition must take place in 2032.

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The purpose of this paper is to introduce the “Natural Resources Perpetuity Rule” in the allocation of resources revenue. We also analyzed the potential impacts of implementing this rule on oil and gas revenues in Iran. To do so, we employed a Computable General Equilibrium Model which is calibrated based on 2010 Micro Consistent Matrix. We assumed an open economy with different sectors such as oil and gas, public services and other activities. Assuming exhaustibility, we measure the impact of different saving rates from Resources Revenue (SR) on welfare, size of public sector, activity levels and exports. We found that the more the SR, the more the welfare loss in first years, the higher the long-run welfare path, the more the non-oil export and the less the size of public sector.

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Dominance of arid and semiarid climate in a vast area of Iran along with the water consumption growth necessitates a more sophisticated planning, a more efficient operation towards an optimal allocation and conservation of water resources in the country. In recent decades many countries, including Iran, have adopted increasing block tariffs for domestic water management. This policy is based on a progressive tariffs applied to control and manage the residential water consumption. In this paper, we developed a panel data model to investigate the impact of increasing block pricing on the residential water consumption during 2004-2008. The average and marginal price models of demand for residential water have been estimated to examine the effects of households’ income and the climate conditions on the residential water consumption. Results show that the increasing block pricing system has not efficiently controlled the residential water consumption in Iran.

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Providing, maintaining and improving health of infants as a vulnerable group has a special place in health care. Due to the importance of this index in the United Nations development indices, we compared the socioeconomic determinants of infant mortality rate in Iran and MENA countries during 1980- 2010. The aims of this comparison was to determine major causes of inequalities in infant mortality rate in the region and also to determine why this index is very high and very low in different countries..

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In the current structure of world economy, imports play an important role in the economic development strategy. Although taking the suitable policies for the imports of goods and services is important, but taking the correct strategy is subject to factors affecting imports. In the most of empirical studies, imports are a function of real income and real exchange rate. So, the effect of income inequality on imports of goods and services has less been investigated. Whereas, increase in income inequality causes an increase in the purchasing power of high income people and demand for imported luxury goods and also causes a change in the composition of domestic and imported consuming goods. This study examine the effect of income inequality on import of goods and services in 17 developed countries and 18 developing countries in the period 1990-2010 using generalized method of moment (GMM) analysis. The results indicate that there is a positive relationship between income inequality and imports of goods and services in developed countries while this relation is negative in developing countries. Furthermore, the relationship between GDP and imports of goods and services is positive in both groups of countries, while the relationship between real exchange rate and imports of goods and services is negative in both groups. Thus, policy makers should redistribute income and wealth in favor of the low income people and motivate them to participate in the production sectors, reduce the inequality gap and improve their competitiveness power in the market and enhance the income from the abroad.

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The commitment and forward-looking behavior of central bank is of great importance. Commitment imposes less social costs on the central bank and the public. However, while there is wide agreement on the importance of commitment, there is much less consensus on how to implement commitment through targeting or instrumental rules. In this paper, we have estimated a basic New Keynesian model in Iran economy based on quarterly data over a sample period for 1990-2010. Then, we introduced a kind of instrumental rules that is called Speed Limit rule. The main feature of this rule is that the output gap is replaced by the changes in the output gap in the central bank's loss function. Then, by calculating appropriate weights under alternative targeting rules, we showed that this rule has the lowest social costs. Then, assuming the use of interest rate as primary monetary policy by the central bank, it is optimal to consider the role of the changes in the output gap (i.e. speed limit rule) in addition to the role of inflation and the output gap. As we expected, the estimation results of this instrumental rule in Iran economy showed that this rule has not been used for determining the interest rate. In other words, among the variables considered, only inflation rate has a positive and significant relationship with the interest rate, and the output gap and the changes in the output gap are not used in determining the interest rate.

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Price shocks lead to oil price volatility in world oil markets. In response to this volatility, economic growth may take different regime and behavior patterns in different situation. Investigating this multi behavior patterns can be useful for policymakers to reduce the effect of oil price volatility. In this study, an EGARCH model has developed using the seasonal data of OPEC oil basket nominal prices during 1367:Q1-1389:Q4. Markov switching models is also applied to investigate the multi behavior patterns of economic growth in response to oil price volatility in Iran. The results show that positive oil price shocks sharply lead to formation of oil price volatility, but, the negative price shocks will slightly reduce oil price volatility. Iranian economic growth is affected by this volatility under three different behavior regimes. If the economy switch to one of the regimes (low, medium, high economic growth), the probability of transition between these regimes and their duration is different. So, oil price volatility as a reason for low economic growth in Iran may cause the economy switch to its lower situation.

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The structure-conduct-performance (SCP) paradigm has constituted an enduring empirical tradition in empirical industrial economics and has the advantage of clarifying the basic building blocks of the competitive mechanisms. This paper presents a SCP model to estimate causes and effects in Iranian manufacturing industry in 2009. The model used in this paper is a system of four simultaneous equations: agglomeration as the standard measure of structure, advertising and R&D as the standard measure of conduct and profitability as the standard measure of performance. Using the data from a sample of Iranian industries, three-stage least squares results indicate that: a) Advertisement has positive and significant impacts on agglomeration and profitability. b) Profitability has positive and significant impacts on agglomeration and advertisement. c) Agglomeration has positive and significant impact on profitability and also a negative impact on advertisement.

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In this study, we designed and simulated a system dynamic model to analyze the impacts of energy intensity changes on environmental and economic indicators in Iran. Results show that if the current situation is continued, the industrial sector energy intensity will increase from 2.67 in the base year to 2.704 at the end of planning horizon. So, the sector will consume 540 million oil barrels to create a value added equals 490627 billion Rials in 2025. Accordingly, the amount of environmental pollutants will increase from 59 million tons in the first year to 267 million tons in 2025 and social costs of producing this pollution would be equal to 67, 449 billion Rials. These findings indicate that regarding the limitation of the production and the increasing costs of energy supply in the future, the country's industrial policies should concentrate on technological changes to increase the efficiency of energy consumption. Also, results indicate that industrial energy consumption has destructive effects on the environment and society in the future and the costs in this sector will not be reversible.

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This study examines the time series behavior of oil production for OPEC member countries in a fractional integration modeling framework. It’s aim is to identify the potential for structural breaks and outliers. The analysis is based on a monthly data from January 1973 to October 2008 for 12 OPEC member countries. The results indicate that a mean reverting persistence in breaks has been experienced in ten of twelve oil production countries. Thus it is obvious that shocks affect on the structure of OPEC oil production and have persistent effects in the long run for all countries. In some countries is expected the effects to be permanent.

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From technology, security and physical points of view automobiles are different regarding Hedonic price model, price of a car is a set of implicit prices concerning different characteristics. In this article we estimate the Hedonic price models using 2009 Iranian automobile market data concerning different characteristics for small cars (Engine capacity of 2000cc and less) and large cars (Engine capacity of more than 2000cc): in Iran cars with engine capacity of 2000cc and less benefits from special petrol subsidies while this is not the care for the large cars. The results indicate that characteristics such as antilock brakes (including ABS and EBD), width, airbag, fuel consumption and engine capacity for small cars, variables such as airbag, antilock brakes(including ABS and EBD), and highs for the large cars are important from the points of view of Iranian customers and have significant effects on the car price.

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One of the empirical relationships that have been used to study the dynamics of labor market is the Beveridge curve -the scatter plot of unemployment rates versus vacancy rates- that is used to summarize the state of that market. The starting point for deriving the Beveridge curve is a matching function between unemployed workers and vacant jobs. In this research, provincial data are combined to estimate the Beveridge curve and the matching function of Iran. The matching function is estimated using provincial data for the period 1993-2008 and for estimating the Beveridge curve, provincial data for period 2005-2008 are used. The outcomes imply that the number of unemployed workers and vacant jobs has a positive and significant relationship with successful job matches. The elasticity of matching function for the unemployed and job vacancies equals 0.24 and 0.79, respectively. The Beveridge curve depicts a convex and negative relationship between unemployment rate and vacancy rate, although the relationship is not strong.

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In economic literature especially in international economic literature, the Harberger, Laursen and Metzler (HLM) effect is an important issue. According to HLM effect, deterioration in the terms of trade decreases GNP and then causes deterioration in the current account. The main idea of this study is the examination of HLM effect in Economy of Iran. We use annual data of current account, terms of trade and GNP as relevant variables. In this paper ARDL approach was applied for period (1978 -2010). The Banerjee, Dolado and Mastre and also Pessaran and shin cointegration test verified the equilibrium long run relation between our variables. In the other words the results of econometric estimation indicated a long run relationship between current account, terms of trade and GNP. According to these results, terms of trade and GNP have direct effects on current account.

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The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of trade openness and economic globalization on employment. This study employs the Bounds test method and Autoregressive Distributed Lag(ARDL) model for Iranian economy during 1979-2009. Comparing with the other empirical studies, this study in addition to traditional index of trade liberalization as trade openness has been applied the new and more comprehensive economic globalization index as one dimension of the new KOF globalization index. This index includes the actual flows of trade such as trade, foreign direct investment and portfolio investment, and restrictions such as trade barriers and tariffs on actual flows. Also, the other control variables effective in employment such as GDP per capita, industrialization and government size has been considered. The results show a negative relationship between trade openness and employment but they show that the impact of economic globalization on employment is positive. Thus, it seems that the new economic globalization (KOF index) which is a broader comprehensive index is a better proxy of globalization.

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This report investigates the dominant factors influencing the price gap and the symmetry principle’s evaluation between the crude oil’s price and gasoline. In this regard, the Brent’s crude oil price, gasoline price in six European countries and the fluctuations of the euro vs. US dollar’s exchange rate over the period of 1/1/1999 to 8/25/2011 in weekly intervals are studied. For this purpose, linear models and nonlinear models, such as artificial neural network and wavelet transformation, are implemented. The results indicate insignificant impact of the mentioned parameters in short period price gap both for linear and nonlinear simulations, but nonlinear modeling explicates 92% of long period fluctuations in price gap. According to linear/nonlinear models the symmetry principle is accepted for short period fluctuations in crude oil’s price, but not for long periods.

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The Iranian electricity industry has been restructured following the global experiences. The main objective of restructuring is transition from natural monopoly towards competition in order to improve efficiency. Currently, the Iranian electricity market is performing as imperfect competition and Pay-as-Bid (PAB) auctions are the major trade mechanism in this market. This paper proves that Supply Function Equilibrium (SFE) is an appropriate approach to analyze behavior of the Iranian electricity market. Isfahan electricity market has been considered as a case study in which SFE is applied (regarding marginal cost estimation as well as demand uncertainty). The derived SFE indicates that there is major difference between SFE and Nash equilibrium.

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ABSTRACT Considering the major impact which changes in the real exchange rate and crude oil prices have on various sectors of Iran's economy and the importance of the financial markets role in economic growth and development, this paper aimed to investigate the effects of the changes in real exchange rate and crude oil prices on Tehran stock exchange using the Markov-Switching's nonlinear models. To this end, daily data which belonged to the following periods were used: 20:03: 2005 - 13:10:2010 The result of the estimations obtained through the Markov Switching Models indicated that MSIAH model with two regimes out of the various MS model are the most suitable ones. The result of the research showed that the changes in the exogenous variable of real exchange rate and the crude oil price have lagging positive effect on the Stock Exchange Index. Moreover, the effects of these changes with two lagging time intervals are significant and negative. The practical implications of these findings could be beneficial to the investors and policy makers who need to be aware of the exact nature of the effects which changes in the exchange rate and crude oil prices have on the stock exchange index.