مصیب پهلوانی

During the last three decades, financial sanctions have been imposed on Iran by the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations Security Council. This paper aims at estimating the effect of financial sanctions on the import of capital and intermediate goods in Iran, which was carried out for two independent time periods. The first period (2010-2013) includes multilateral financial sanctions, and the second period (2016-2019) includes multilateral sanctions and the withdrawal of the United States from the JCPOA. We examined the impact using the difference-in-difference (DID) method. The results of the first period indicate that the decrease in the imports of capital and intermediate goods in Iran depends more on the countries that "provided the sanctions plan" than the countries that did not provide the sanctions plan, because the coefficient of dummy variable for implementation in the random effects model is statistically significant. The negative effect of 0.007 on imports shows that the effect is weak, because this group of countries behaved differently. In the second period, the random effects model is statistically significant. In this model, the negetive effect of 0.22 on imports indicates a significant effect. Therefore, the reduction of Iran's imports in this period depends more on the countries that provided the sanctions plan than the countries that did not provide the plan.

By utilizing the new Keynesian stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model, this paper examines the effects of credit easing policy on macroeconomic variables with or emphasizing on production. For this purpose, a model has been design including 5 sectors of household, enterprises, banks, government and central bank. Considering the dominance of fiscal policy over monetary policy in the Iranian economy, the integrated constraint of the government and the central bank has been used. The model has been estimated using Bayesian method and quarterly time series data during 1991 to 2017. The results of Impulse Response Function show that implementation of this policy has increased consumption, investment, government spending and ultimately production, which indicates the effectiveness of this unconventional monetary policy to get the economy out of recession. Also, in response to the positive impulse of the central bank’s credit line to banks and the negative impulse of legal reserves, bank facilities increase, which is in line with theoretical expectations. The impact of the negative impulse of interbank market rate has also led to an increase in production credits. 

Financial markets are channels for attracting surplus financial resources and allocating them to investment. Macro-prudential policy needs to consider financial cycle in order to assess the state of the financial sector, predict its developments and justify the need for specific policy tools. we examined the effect of macro-prudential policies on financial cycle of Iran's economy Over the period 2008-2018 using Unobserved Components Structural Time Series Model. We explored the effect of macro-prudential policy index and other variables on the financial cycle. The findings of this study, using the Generalized method of moments (GMM) for the time series data, suggested that the macro-prudential policy index has a negative and significant effect on the financial cycle in the Iranian economy. Also, the probability(likelihood) of a banking crisis, the interbank market loan rate and the economic growth index have positive and significant effect on the financial cycle.

In recent decades, many countries have improved systematic control over monetary policy and stabilized inflation at moderate levels. There is a great literature on how to conduct a monetary policy. A lot of macroeconomists (for example Taylor, McCallum, Woodford and others) proposed specific monetary policy strategies, regimes and rules. This paper considers a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE), and two basic factors have been applied. The first one is a belief that monetary policy has impact on real economic activity in the short run. This effect comes from the presence of rigidities, which give rise to non-neutral effects of a monetary policy. The second factor is a considerable improvement under theoretical frameworks used for monetary policy analysis. The research also presents a sensitivity analysis of the optimal rules to deep structural parameters and investigate properties of an optimal simple rule with respect to prevailing type of shocks. Finally, the study highlights how an optimal policy rule depends on model structure, on the model calibration and nominal rigidities. According to the research findings, based on the theoretical expectations, the effect of a positive shock inflicted on the government investment leads to increase and gradual accumulation of fixed capital formation in the public sector. Among estimated parameters consumption is first affected and reduces, then employment increases consequently, finally production will also be affected. Also with the shock of oil revenues, increased oil revenues results in public investment at first, because the increase in oil revenues, the government increases development expenditure. Though increase in development expenditure is more than Increase in current expenditure. Enhancing development expenditure & construction spending causes total spending increase and as a result of increased production of oil income, consumption and total investment will rise. This increase leads to inflation too. Though by increasing the inflation resulted from oil revenues, the monetary authority will react through reducing the growth rate of the monetary base.

In the present study, the authors examined the impact of financial sanctions on economic growth using Iran's data and intervention time-series analysis over the period 2005-2017. Financial sanctions targeted the country's financial resources and increased interest rates and medium- and long-term financing costs. In general, financial sanctions adversely affected the financial sector. In this regard, blocking of assets and restricted access to financial and foreign exchange resources, depreciated domestic currency, reduced investment, exports, and production along with increased inflation and unemployment ultimately reduced economic growth. The results indicated the effectiveness of financial sanctions on economic growth in the short-run. However, during the third period (2010-2014), when severe and multilateral financial sanctions are imposed, the coefficient is negative (0.54), which is higher, compared to the other periods. As the economic sanctions of Iran have intensified, the economic growth has slowed down. Nevertheless, in the long run, financial sanctions have had a weaker negative effect of 0.19 on the economic growth.

This paper examines the gap between marginal cost and the price of 22 manufacturing industries in Iran at ISIC 2-digit level and 32 industries at a 3-digit level during 1995-2015 compared to selected countries. It examines the gap by using the Hall-Roeger model. We found that in garments, basic chemicals, non-metallic mining, and refined petroleum products, the price and marginal cost difference are high and in tobacco industries are low. In 3 out of 22 industries at ISIC 2- digit level and in 11 out of 32 industries at 3-digit level, Iranian industries have higher markups and a significant gap between price and marginal cost than Japan, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. Also from 32 industries in ISIC 3-digit level and 22 industries in 2-digit level, Iran has the lowest mark-up in the tobacco industry with 1.03 and in chemical products with 2,33, has the highest markup. JEL Classification:   , , 

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis (2007-2009), policymakers in the developing countries and emerging economies have generally relied on macroprudential policies to achieve financial stability. Since the banking system's vulnerability plays an essential role in financial instability, and the banking system's stability is exposed to vulnerability, we examine macroprudential policies' effectiveness in reducing banking vulnerability and economic instability through containing credit growth. We estimated a dynamic panel for 14 Iranian banks using GMM and Arellano-Bovar / Blundell-bond two-stage estimators during 2009-2018. The results indicate that the increase in lending rates in the interbank market leads to the banking system's contraction of lending capacity. The positive and significant effect of the economic growth index indicates the banks' procyclical behavior. That financial institutions in the business cycles behave procyclical in lending. The diminishing effect of the macroprudential policy index on the bank credit expansion indicates that macroprudential authority and policy tools' application reduces the banking system's instability and vulnerability. Therefore, to reduce financial intermediation instability, the financial sector regulator can institutionalize macroprudential policies.