International Journal of Business and Development Studies

In accordance with the Iranian government intention toward two step forward elimination of energy subsidies policy in coming years, we focus in this study on the extent by which the corresponding raising costs will be distributed across the livestock sector and how they affected food security. For this purpose, scenario of increasing energy prices and improving productivity at vertical and horizontal meat market is applied by a multi-market equilibrium displacement model to Iranian livestock sector for next five years. Results show that changing the price of poultry and beef have the highest impacts on animal protein intake. Improving productivity could compensate decreasing of protein and calorie intakes for successive four years but not at the last year.

In recent decades, theorists proposed the role of domestic components such as interior active groups, policies and macroeconomic indicators on determination of protection policies. In the context of recent studies, this study has investigated the effect of business cycle fluctuations on import protection for selected developing countries in 1995-2011 by using dynamic panel data method. Furthermore, for sensitivity analysis, we have estimated the effect of business cycle fluctuations on protection cycle fluctuations. The results indicate that the effect of business cycle fluctuations on import protection is negative and significant. This effect has been confirmed for protection cycle fluctuations too. Based on the results, the cyclical feature of import protection is confirmed for the selected countries. On the one side, we suggest that the Governments advocate of the protection should pay more attention to the role of the endogenous factors of import protection especially the business cycles in order to increasing the success of the protection policies. On the other side, the suggestion is that the pro economic liberalization governments may liberalize more the economy in boom periods to decrease the adjustment costs.

In a general classification, the economy of any country is divided into two parts of official and invisible economies. Invisible activities drop outside the scope of the law and official economy and strongly affect socioeconomic development and the formal sector of all countries.These activities which are known under various titles including the shadow economy are influenced by various factors. This paper examined the effects of globalization on the shadow economy. The study was conducted for a selection of developing countries and transition economies during the period from 1999 to 2009 using Differenced Generalized Method of Moments (Difference-GMM) and System Generalized Method of Moments (System-GMM) approaches. Finally, a comparison was made between these two approaches. The results of the study indicated the superiority of System GMM approach in comparison with Differenced GMM. Due to the results of the System GMM as the superior approach, there was an inverse relationship between the shadow economy and globalization. In other words, less economic freedoms and restrictions in various economic areas such as taxation and investments increase the size of the shadow economy. The increase of the shadow economy can be considered as a threat to the national output.

Outbreak of 2009 European sovereign debt (leverage) crisis has been one of the most crucial economic events of recent years. Accordingly, researchers devoted a great deal of efforts to elucidate origins and consequences of this crisis, particularly focusing on its potential effect on international trade flows. Yet in the literature, there have been rare studies on exploring the effects of sovereign debt crisis on the bilateral trade flows of Eurozone members. In this study, by using an augmented gravity model, we have studied the effect of sovereign debt crisis on bilateral trade flows within Eurozone countries. In this regard, we have used cross-section data from six European countries including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece for the period of 1995-2013, and then have estimated the model with a semi-parametric panel data approach. The empirical results have shown that scales of economies and markets play significant parametric roles in the bilateral trade flows in the Eurozone while debt crisis explains trade relations non-parametrically.

This paper investigates the relationship between macroeconomic instability and private investment of the Iranian economy. The study uses a trivariate VAR(2)-GARCH(1,1)-in-Mean with diagonal BEKK approach to proxied inflation and exchange rate uncertainties as the main indicators of macroeconomic instability. Moreover, Bounds testing approach to level relationship applied to investigate the long-run relationship between macroeconomic instability and private investment. By taking the structural breaks into account, results of the paper reveal that there are mean spillovers between inflation, exchange rate and private investment. There also is a negative effect of macroeconomic instability on private investment over the period of study, 1988:1-2010:4. These results support Pindyck (1982, 1988, 1991), Caballero (1991), Ferderer (1993a), Caballero and Pindyck (1996).

The regulated price policy may be implemented for some products. It is generally implemented for some products such as electricity, natural gas, water and so on that are supplied as monopolist. The regulated price shock on these products may lead to an adjustment in the endowments of primary factors. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of a regulated price shock on price indices when all primary production factors adjust their endowment with respect to a price shock. To this end, in addition to a mathematical approach, the matter is demonstrated practically for Iran’s economy through an extended Standard Leontief Price (SLP) model. The Input-Output table of Iran for the year 2001 is employed as the database of the research. The result of the research indicates that in a similar case, the regulated price shock is neutral and has no benefit for the monopolists who brought it up.

The value of travel time savings (VTTS) is the monetary value attached to save a determined amount of travel time. VTTS is also the most important benefit category aimed at justifying investments in transport infrastructures by public administrations. Hence VTTS played a significant role in various economic studies, both analytical and empirical (Zamparini & Reggiani, 2007). ""It is difficult to name a concept more widely used in transportation analysis than the value of travel time. Its theoretical meaning and its empirical measurement are fundamental to travel demand modeling, social cost analysis, pricing decisions, project evaluation, and the evaluation of many public policies"".(small,2012) In developing countries the lack of data regarding the economic value of time savings cause that it often be omitted from appraisal or relied upon proportion of market wage rate (the wage rate method) or using values obtained from developed countries. of course the values obtained from developed countries have serious drawbacks because existing research suggest that value of time is highly affected by preference, physical characteristic of geographical area and habit of particular society ,thus different situation require different modeling and attempt to transfer result from one area to another are fraught of danger, on other hand empirical and theoretical research indicates that the value of time can be significantly higher or lower than the current wage rate, depending on many condition .This paper uses a revealed preference approach to estimate the VTTS for work and educational trips by collecting 480 questioners from individuals that trip in morning peak time in Isfahan city in 1392, and use of discrete choice model for modeling individuals' preferences. Estimated results show, the value of travel time in Isfahan city in morning peak time is 350.50 Rials for each minute and 21030 Rials for each hour in this year.