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  In this paper, a small scale Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregressive (FAVAR) Model is utilized to analyze the effects of monetary shocks on price level and economic activities in the Iranian housing sector. To analyze the "price level", four price indices of the housing sector were used and also six indices to estimate the "economic activities" in this sector were determined. The results show that shocks from liquidity and high powered money will have wave-like effects on the housing sector in Iran. The waves have an approximate duration of 5 years which is confirmed by observations of the housing sector in Iran. Also the results show that the effects of the liquidity shocks have more durable effects on the sector in comparison with the high powered money shocks.

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    This study aims at determining the optimal environmental tax policy in the context of a dynamic model. For this purpose, clean technology diffusion was added to the AK growth model and the theoretical model has been generalized to the open economy. The main feature of the economy is creating pollution in the process of economic growth and its negative impact on social welfare. The diffusion of clean technology reduces pollution emission and has a positive effect on environmental quality and social welfare.

  The Hamiltonian solution of the model indicates that the steady state growth rate and optimal tax pollution is affected by the consumer preference toward consumption and environmental quality, pollution elasticity with respect to production, clean technology diffusion, foreign growth rate, inverse elasticity of intertemporal substitution , depreciation rate of capital and trade parameters.

  The results show that the optimal tax rate in Iranian economy is about 15 percent. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis shows that the emission elasticity of pollution subject to the production and environmental preference parameters have larger impacts on optimal tax rate than foreign growth rate and trade parameters.

 

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  D’Alessandro’s (2010) model investigates the impact of total government spending on private consumption but according to Barro’s (1981) suggestion, the impact of two groups of government spending on private consumption can be studied separately. The fist group produces utility affecting services for household and the second group is as an input in the private production process. So in the present article, we use d’Alessandro’s (2010) framework -after some changes in household utility function and the production function- for estimating the separate effects of two groups of government spending on private consumption.

  In the next step, the data for Iran (1959-2007) is considered and the estimation results show that the first group of government spending for household consumption in short run is Edgeworth complement and in long run is Edgeworth independent. While government spending in case of the second group has a positive relationship with household consumption both in long run and short run. Thus, this paper proposes particular attention to changes in the composition of government spending in favor of government consumption spending as an input (second group) rather than expenses affecting the utility of households.

 

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  This paper investigates the relationship between real exchange rate uncertainty and stock price index in Tehran stock exchange for the period of 1995-2009 by using monthly data and applying Bivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity model (Bivariate GARCH). The results show that there is a negative and significant relationship between real exchange rate uncertainty and stock price index. However, the relationship between stock price uncertainty and real exchange rate is insignificant. Therefore, our results recommend that the policies which cause more volatility in the exchange market and also more volatility in the real exchange rate should be avoided to ensure the sustainable growth of the stock market and its price index.

  

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  The ultimate goals of the monetary policy are price stability and the output growth. Monetary policy instruments are interest rate and the growth rate of monetary base. One of the well-known rules in conducting monetary policy is Taylor rule, through which, central banks change the interest rate while taking into account the output and inflation distortions. There are two problems with applying Taylor rule in Iran: First, the weak micro-foundation of the rule and second, according to this rule specially in the short run, instead of interest rate the policy variable is the growth rate of the monetary base. This research extends Taylor rule by explaining micro-foundation of the rule. So, using Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), we investigated the consistency of the Iranian central bank’s reaction function with extended Taylor rule in the period 1979- 2008. The empirical results show that although monetary authorities react appropriately with respect to output distortion, but their reaction is not appropriate with respect to inflation distortion.

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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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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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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.