Mahmoud Mashhadi-Ahmad
Volume 15, Issue 57 , July 2015, Pages 1-38
Abstract
In the arena of Economic thought, there has always been some intellectual confrontation between the two major economic schools, i.e. Institutionalism and Neoclassical economics. This challenge has taken place at different levels; ranging from the most fundamental levels which are principles of ontology ...
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In the arena of Economic thought, there has always been some intellectual confrontation between the two major economic schools, i.e. Institutionalism and Neoclassical economics. This challenge has taken place at different levels; ranging from the most fundamental levels which are principles of ontology and epistemology to higher levels of policy implications. This article is an attempt to address some of the aspects of this debate and the challenges created by it. Neoclassical advocates claim that institutionalism suffers from lack of theory. Indeed, they try to nullify institutionalism as non-scientific school. But, suddenly these questions arise that "what is science, and what can be considered as science at all?" "Is neoclassical economics science and institutional economics not?" These questions are among the issues which are addressed in this article. It will be shown in this article that institutionalism has an important core of economic theories that turns it to a powerful paradigm. But, in order to understand this, we have to go beyond what is considered theory in neoclassical school. Furthermore we will go through other claims that these two schools hold against each other and address some of them such as realism, scope and precision of theory, and solidarity of paradigm. We will show that in some of these areas such as perception of reality and realism, the difference between these two schools of thought is essential.
Nahid Pour-Rostami
Volume 15, Issue 57 , July 2015, Pages 39-74
Abstract
The spread of high economic growth among East Asian countries in the last three decades resulted in increasing attention regarding these countries’ development models. The present study attempts to investigate the process of integration among 15 countries in East Asia and to identify factors influencing ...
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The spread of high economic growth among East Asian countries in the last three decades resulted in increasing attention regarding these countries’ development models. The present study attempts to investigate the process of integration among 15 countries in East Asia and to identify factors influencing the convergence of these countries during the years 1980 to 2012. The results show that the hypothesis of absolute beta convergence and sigma convergence are confirmed in the region. Examining the convergence toward the average reginal GDP per capita shows that the absolute beta convergence and sigma convergence are not confirmed for Japan. Meanwhile, conditional convergence is shown for Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore, while absolute convergence is confirmed for Brunei, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. These results indicate a significant difference between the three countries of Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore, regarding GDP per capita compared with the average GDP per capita in the region. Due to Japan's position as a leading economy in the region, we investigate these countries’ convergence with Japan. The results show that all countries (except Macau, Brunei and Mongolia) have convergence with Japan. Asian international input-output tables depict a highly deepening and widening interdependency among manufacturing sector in East Asian countries during the years 1985-2005. Their interdependency which can be explained by "Flying Geese Pattern of Development" started with the acceptance of Plaza Accord in 1985 and the drastic wage increase in Japan in the early 1980s. Because of this interdependency, in the second part of this study we investigate the relationship between total export and bilateral export by using extended gravity model during the years 1988-2012. The results confirmed a significant positive relationship between bilateral exports and some of the model’s variables such as GDP and total relative exports of countries in the sample.
Mohammadreza Asghari Oskoei
Volume 15, Issue 57 , July 2015, Pages 75-108
Abstract
This paper proposes application of sliding window technique to time-delay neural network (TDNN) for prediction of financial time series. Neural network is a data-driven approach, in which we have huge data samples but limited information about the model structure. In this paper, we measure performance ...
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This paper proposes application of sliding window technique to time-delay neural network (TDNN) for prediction of financial time series. Neural network is a data-driven approach, in which we have huge data samples but limited information about the model structure. In this paper, we measure performance of the prediction and apply sliding window technique to select the most favorable neural network structure, time-delay taps and the most desirable training data size that result in the best prediction performance. The method was evaluated by using real data of share price of four firms traded in London Stock Exchange. The results show remarkable decrease for the root mean squared error, mean absolute percentage error and the linear regression of TDNN output offset.
Alireza Shakibaei; Zahra Kamal-e-Dini; Fatemeh Taleghani; Mohammadreza Ahmadi-Nejad
Volume 15, Issue 57 , July 2015, Pages 109-140
Abstract
Regional inequalities have always been one of the concerns of the government planners and they have attempted to recognize these inequalities and devise particular policies to curb them. The motivation to work on this domain has led to the development of different indices and techniques to measure regional ...
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Regional inequalities have always been one of the concerns of the government planners and they have attempted to recognize these inequalities and devise particular policies to curb them. The motivation to work on this domain has led to the development of different indices and techniques to measure regional inequalities. β-convergence examination is one of the aforementioned methods of measuring income distribution. An important point is that, urbanization trend cannot be examined apart from economic variables either in Iran or in other countries of the world and economic variables such as households’ income are expected to be affected by the degree of urbanization. Consistent with this reasoning, we can say that urbanization is one of the effective factors on income distribution; therefore, the present paper is focused on the examination of urbanization effects upon convergence rate of income distribution between urban and rural areas in 25 selected provinces of Iran during the time period of 2001-2011 using general spatial econometric model and ordinary least squares (OSL) method. The findings indicated the existence of income distribution convergence among the examined provinces during the above-mentioned period. Moreover, during this period and following the increasing degree of urbanization, the conditional convergence rate for decreasing the gap between current income of urban and rural and its steady state equilibrium is increased as compared with the absolute convergence rate.
Somayeh Khatibi; Ali Asghar Salem
Volume 15, Issue 57 , July 2015, Pages 141-164
Abstract
After fifty years from establishment of first islamic bank, nowadays islamic banking growth and its successful competition with conventional banks is clearly observed. In our paper, we measure the cost efficiency of islamic and conventional banks. Our sample contains 7 countries: Jordan, United Arab ...
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After fifty years from establishment of first islamic bank, nowadays islamic banking growth and its successful competition with conventional banks is clearly observed. In our paper, we measure the cost efficiency of islamic and conventional banks. Our sample contains 7 countries: Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, because they have both types of banking and data for both types of banks in selective country is accessible. By using Stochastic Frontier Approach over the period of 1999-2006, this study shows that, on average, the efficiency of an islamic bank (0.902) is higher than that of conventional bank (0.849). This fact can be the reason of growing islamic banking sector and the cause of other countries’ incentive to establish islamic banks. The comparisons between countries show that in United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the efficiency of islamic banks is higher than that of conventional ones but in Jordan, Turkey and Qatar, conventional banks are more efficient..
Hassan Heidari; Rana Asghari; Roghayyeh Ali-Nezhad
Volume 15, Issue 57 , July 2015, Pages 165-192
Abstract
The present study investigates the impact of government efficiency on inflation rate with considerations on the relationship of this important index with government intervention in the economy and also with the structure of government expenditures for 16 countries from MENA region over the period ...
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The present study investigates the impact of government efficiency on inflation rate with considerations on the relationship of this important index with government intervention in the economy and also with the structure of government expenditures for 16 countries from MENA region over the period 1996-2012. For this purpose, the paper uses the Panel Smooth Transition Regression (PSTR) model. The estimation results of model reject the linearity hypothesis, and estimate a continuous transition function with two regimes that gives a threshold at government efficiency of 0.185 for countries studied in this paper. Moreover the results indicate that government efficiency index, GDP growth and openness index have a negative impact on inflation rate that their impacts are increased for the values above the threshold calculated for government efficiency. The other results indicate that the coefficients of the government consumption expenditures growth and liquidity variables are positive and significant in two regimes. Though, their impacts are less in second regime. In general, the results of this study confirm the results of many other studies about positive effects of government consumption expenditure growth and liquidity and also negative effects of government efficiency index, GDP growth and openness index on inflation rate. Thus, it is recommended to reduce government size trough minimizing government personnel and its levels. It is also recommended to institutionalize accountability systems over the administrative and legal frame, and staffs professional manner in reception with citizens, and also have political stability and independence of government to central bank. These are effective ingredients in increasing the government efficiency and reduction of inflation rate.
Mohsen Khezri; Bahram Sahabi; Kazem Yavari; Hassan Heydari
Volume 15, Issue 57 , July 2015, Pages 193-228
Abstract
Given the importance of inflation in Iran economy, scrutiny of inflation determinants is important .according to various studies, evaluation of determinants of inflation using standard VAR model, may lead to wrong conclusions and this is due to omitted variables bias in VAR model. For example, the problem ...
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Given the importance of inflation in Iran economy, scrutiny of inflation determinants is important .according to various studies, evaluation of determinants of inflation using standard VAR model, may lead to wrong conclusions and this is due to omitted variables bias in VAR model. For example, the problem of price puzzle in the empirical literature is one of these results. In this study, for a more accurate assessment of determinants of inflation in Iranian economy and forecasting inflation, instead of using FAVAR model with constant coefficients, we have employed TVP-FAVAR models and inflation has been modeled. In this model, the variables of GDP growth, growth of the monetary base, inflation, exchange rates and interest rates are considered as the main variables, and to estimate the non-observable variables of speculation section return, variables in the overall classification are modeled. Based on the results, the relationship between the variables change over time and conditions prevailing in the economy is effective on the influence of model variables on each other.
