مطالب

In this paper, we empirically investigate the relationship between oil price changes and output in a group of oil exporting countries. The dynamics of business cycles in Libya, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Kuwait, Venezuela and Qatar are modeled by alternative regime switching models. We show that the extension of uni-variate Markov Switching model in order to include oil revenue improves dating business cycles in these economies. For all countries, the optimal specification suggested by the data is to consider three cycles or regimes, namely, high growth, mild growth, and recession. These three regimes can be associated to high positive oil shock, mild positive oil shock and negative oil price shock. An interesting finding of the paper is that there is a variety of relationships between oil price shocks and business cycles. Thus, in order to see the effects of an oil price shock one should take into consideration the economic regime when the oil price shock hits the economy. Therefore, it is not possible to talk about a general relationship between oil price shocks and macroeconomic variables for all the main oil exporting countries. JEL Classification: E31, E32, E52, Q41

In the discussions of trading, unemployment and income distribution inequality, this question is raised by economists that in economic development of developing and developed countries, which policy is necessary in the first stage. Is trading liberalization the pre-requirement of transfer from a close economy to a relative open economy and is it necessary for the developed economy compared to other policies, or after achieving an economic growth level and reduction of class difference, poverty and unemployment, the countries should start trade liberalization. By this pre-requirement, a two-stage systematic generalized method of moments technique (GMM) presented by Blundell & bond (1998) during 1991-2008 is applied to evaluate the relationship between three main indices for both groups of selected developed and developing countries. The results of study show that in both groups of countries, high production and increasing foreign direct investment provide open economy and can create employment and reduce unemployment but by increasing population growth rate, unemployment and inflation in both groups of countries, household income inequality is increased. The turning point of this study is regarding household income inequality as increased by increasing economic growth rate and control of open economy in developing counties but in developed countries, increasing economic growth rate and open economy, household income distribution is improved.  JEL Classification: C33, C36, D31, F43.

Beginning in the mid-1980s, the phenomenon of capital flight from developing countries received considerable attention in the economics literature. Capital flight destroys the domestic macroeconomic environment and decreases transparency and accountability. It restricts financial resources when a country is looking for economic growth and development. The purpose of this article is to measure the amount of capital flight in Iran during 1981-2012, and to investigate the long-run effects of estimated capital flight on the Iranian economic growth in this period. To do so, the amount of capital flight in Iran has been measured using World Bank (1985) and Erbe (1985) approach. Then, the Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) procedure has been applied in order to estimate a growth equation. Results show that capital flight has a negative impact on economic growth in Iran. JEL Classification: O4, E22, C01.  

The present study investigated the effect of blended online and face-to-face instruction on the use of reading strategies by Iranian EFL learners. Out of 100 pre-selected learners, 60 homogeneous participants were identified as intermediate, according to their scores on the Oxford Placement Test. The participants were assigned to experimental (n=30) and control (n=30) groups. Then, a pretest was administered to assess participants’ current knowledge of reading comprehension. Both groups received a 7-session reading instruction. Whereas the experimental group was subjected to blended online environment where they could take advantage of Nicenet platform, the participants in the control group received materials, instruction and feedback through traditional methods in the classroom. After the experiment, the participants were required to take a reading comprehension test similar pretest as the post-test. In order to compare the frequency of reading strategy use by the experimental and control groups, the participants in the two groups were asked to fill out the Reading Strategies Questionnaire both before and after the experiment. The results of t-test between pre- and post-test showed that there is a significant difference between the experimental group and the control group in using the reading strategies.The findings of this study could help EFL teachers and syllabus designers gain insights into the processes learners go through when reading.

Task-based language teaching is considered an effective way to achieve a harmony between grammar and communication. The present study investigates two different ways of teaching modal verbs: task-based versus traditional approaches. To this purpose, an Oxford Placement Test was administered to select 40 homogeneous participants out of a larger population who took this test. The selected participants were randomly divided into experimental and control groups of 20 students each. Those in the experimental group attended an English class six days a week, practicing grammar through tasked-based approach, while the control group did not receive any task-based work. The OPT was administered at the end of the semester again to see which group could do modal verbs better. A final test of modal verb tasks was also administered at the end of the study to see if all the learners have improved in using modal verbs in the same way/at the same amount through task-based language teaching. The results of this study indicated that there is a statistically significant difference between the experimental group and the control group, meaning that teaching modal verbs through task-based approaches has been more effective than teaching them in traditional ways. It was also revealed that the modal verb can was improved much more, while have to and must were improved less. The results of the study may have a significant implication for teaching modal verbs in particular and language learning in general.

The present study attempted to investigate the impact of cooperation versus collaboration on college students` reading ability. To fulfill the purpose of the study, 90 participants were chosen from among 140 by means of administering the Nelson Proficiency Test. They were divided into three groups: cooperative group, collaborative group, and control group. A fifty-item multiple-choice reading vocabulary test was developed, validated, and used as the pretest. The results of the one-way ANOVA showed that there was no significant difference among the groups. Then after a number of cooperative and collaborative strategies used as the treatment in this study in six sessions of ninety minutes for each experimental group class, (control group without treatment) the posttest, which resembled the pretest in many respects, was administered to the three groups. The results of one-way ANOVA and Scheffee Test showed that the cooperative and collaborative groups worked better than the control group, and the collaborative one performed best.