درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

In economic theory, various determinants are considered to explore their effects on trade patterns. Accordingly, business cycles indicate turbulences in economic activities. Business cycles and their fluctuations cause a change in demand for goods and services from the other country then it can affect trade flows. In this study, by using a gravity model, we study the effects of business cycles on bilateral trade flows within Eurozone countries. In this regard, the challenge is that the countries in the region may be faced whit changes in their trade relation in directions whether parametric or non-parametric manners. To be evident, we have used we have used data from six Eurozone countries, namely Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece for the period of 1995-2013, and then estimate the model with a semi-parametric panel data approach. The empirical results have shown that business cycles explain trade relations non-parametrically in the region. The results imply a transparent unique exchange policy toward their mutual trade flows to avoid outliers in their economic relations. JEL Classification: C14, F10, E32.  

The present study has made an attempt to discuss the effects of exchange rate volatility and price expectation on maize imports in Iran from 1980 to 2013. In doing so, using the EGARCH technique for time series econometrics, price volatility variables for both exchange rate and final price have been calculated, and the time series for these variables have been extracted. Additionally, in regard to the expected import price, the related time series has been extracted using Hodrick-Prescott filter (HP). The empirical results indicate that exchange rate volatility and price volatility have had no significant effects on maize import, which is due to the fact that maize is a basic commodity and is imported by the official currency, therefore domestic price volatilities and the exchange rate do not have significant effects on maize imports. However, by freezing the exchange rate and not allocating official currency, the possibility of the exchange rate volatility affecting maize imports exists and this issue could affect the whole country’s food security. JEL Classification: Q17, F13, F31

The present study tries to investigate the existing risks in the new product development process in the core banking field. Due to its use after production, new product development with the fewest errors and risks is always the subject of discussion and investigation among the researchers of this field. This study aims to investigate the most important risks existing in the new product development. The most important issue in this regard is that the market of manufactured products is increasingly competitive and the life-cycle of products is in decline due to environmental impacts. These factors force companies to follow such a process (new product development). Many techniques have been invented and applied in order to assess and manage the existing risks in different processes. Failure modes analysis technique and its resulted effects (FMEA) are considered as one of the most effective techniques that have been used for risk assessment of new product development in this study. Also, CORPAS-G method is used for prioritizing the detected risks. The purpose of this study is to identify the risks of new product and their priority for corrective measures to reduce the probable risks. Keywords: Risk assessment, Risk management, New product development, Core banking, FMEA, COPRAS-G GEL Classification: D24, D40, D61, D81, D92

Not only in Iran, but throughout the world, banks and banking industry are considered as very important parts of the economy. This study seeks to investigate the impact of the internal characteristics of banks, the structure of the banking industry and the economic situation of Iran on the profitability of the banking system of Iran by exploring the theory of the Structuralism school concerning the impact of structure on profitability. To this end, data relating to 18 private and public banks of Iran during 2003 to 2012 are analyzed by using panel data methods. First, the profitability of the banking system is calculated using relevant indicators; and then, the impact of various internal, structural and environmental factors on bank profitability is evaluated. The results show that internal factors - the amount of capital and the size of the bank - have a positive impact on profitability. Besides, structural factors including market share and concentration are shown to have a positive impact on profitability whereas ownership appears to have no significant impact. Furthermore, inflation and economic cycles – among environmental factors – exhibit a positive impact on profitability. JEL Classifications: C23, D22, L22, L25

This paper focuses on developing models to study influential factors on the inflation rate for a panel of available countries in the World Bank data base during 2008-2012 . For this purpose , Random effect log-linear and Ordinal logistic models are used for the analysis of continuous and categorical inflation rate variables . As the original inflation rate response to variables shows an apparent right skewness , the log transformation in the linear mixed effect model seems necessery . In the ordinal logistic mixed effect model , as a new approach , the inflation rate variable is categorized based on two threshols to increase model predictibality and precision . These two models consider the potential serial correlation between annual infltion rates and categories through introducing some latent random effect parameters . The results of both models show that money growth , GDP , oil price and income levels of the available countries are significant predictors with increasing effect on the next year inflation rate category . Using the categorical inflation response variable yields some superior results where government expenditure , exchange rate and capital formation are also detected as significant determinants of ordinal inflation variable . Also , the random effect variance is highly significant in both models which shows the necessery need for consideration of the potential association of inflation variables across time . JEL Classifications: E17, E27, E31, E37, E47