مطالب

Consumption is the principal feature of Iran€™s Gross National Production. Therefore, recognizing of factors that influence it is quite crucial. This article, investigates habit formation, durability, relative risk aversion and intertemporal substitution in consumption expenditures of Iranian households. For empirical study, at first, we constructed two weighted portfolio of the main assets return that households hold them. Then, by using generalized method of moments, we examined some models with the mentioned factors in pattern of households€™ consumption for 1979-2012 periods. Our Empirical findings indicated that for durable goods, the effect of habit persistence dominated the effect of durability in consumption expenditures and for semi durable goods vice versa. Also, for semi-durable and durable goods the effect of durability dominated the effect of habit formation. Furthermore, the results indicate that coefficients of relative risk aversion and elasticity of intertemporal substitution are between 0.25 to 0.95 and 1.05 to 4, respectively.    JEL Classification: C26, D91, G11

The Khānegāh or the Shrine of Shaikh Safi al-Din in Ardabil, north-west of Iran, listed as the world heritage site ( by UNESCO) back in 2011 under the identification no. 1450. This ensemble is located at 38° 14´52/5" northern latitude, 48° 17´27/5˝ longitude, and altitude of 1365 above sea level in the center of city of Ardabil. The ensemble of Shaikh Safi al-Din is a well-developed prototype constituting social, religious, charitable, cultural, and educational functions. With range of versatile spaces, it has met the physical and spiritual needs of residents and pilgrims as such; it includes places to meet needs in fields of education and training, livelihood and healthcare. Relying on the diagram of De Morgan, it seems there are more than 67 spaces and courtyards attached to the Khānegāh, all of which have had a significant role in the training and educational philosophy of Safavid tradition. After decade of Safavid, most part of this magnificent structure damaged. F. Sarre, a German researcher, conducted one of the earliest studies on the architectural and archaeological history of Ardabil shrine in 1897. Some others such as Dibaj (1948), Ali Akbar Sar-faraz,(1974), Weaver (1974), Morton (1974) and Seyyed Mahmoud Mousawi (1995-6) have also carried out researches on this subject in recent decades. Archaeological works of Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization of Islamic Republic also conducted a study under the leadership of Hassan Yousefi in 2007. These studies cleared so many unsolved historical questions about the general plan of the holy shrine.

An upward trend in the divorce rate in Iran in recent years has attracted officials, researchers and sociologists towards investigating causes and factors contributing such a social menace. Based on the statistics published by the Statistics Center of Iran (SCI), the divorce rate has gone up from 1.5 in 1000 cases in 1996 to 2.3 in 1999 and 3.1 in 2006. Results of previous studies show that factors such as age and educational differences between husband and wife, women’s employment, addiction and lack of moral principles have been the most important causes of the divorce. This study, however, focusing on the socio-economic status of the divorcee in Iran, picks up a different view from that of other studies conducted in this field. This article also tries to identify the relationships between the rules applicable to personal and employment variables among divorced people using exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) techniques. The sample data used in this study include 6400 divorcee from the total divorced population (of 392075) in the county according to the 2006 census; those who have declared themselves without marriage partner due to divorce. The sample includes both male and female. Results show that the main characteristics of divorced women were their employment and level of education which were statistically significant in metropolitan regions where there is a rise in the employment and education level of women. On the contrary, low education, unemployment, and place of work have been significant factors among divorced men.

Expansion of urban area is a well-known phenomenon in developing countries with population growth and the migration from villages to cities being two major factors. Those factors reduce the influence of efforts to limit the cities boundaries. Thus, spatial planners always look for the models that simulate the expansion of urban land-uses, and enable them to prevent unbalanced expansions of cities, and guide the developments to the desired areas. Several models have been developed and evaluated for simulating urban land-use expansions. Although these models are numerous, most of them have focused to simulate urban land-use expansions in sub-urban areas. The regional models that cover wider area are equally important. In this study, a new agent-based model has been developed and implemented to simulate urban land-use expansion in Qazvin and Alborz regions of Qazvin province, which cover 1620 square kilometres. In this model, land-use developers have been treated as computer agents that move in the landscape explicitly, and assess the state of parcels for development. The environment of the model is raster. The agents are categorized based on two scenarios. In the first scenario, all agents are of similar category and in the second scenario the agents are divided into five categories with different objectives. Then, the results of the two scenarios are compared. Due to the spatial essence of the problem, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) were used to prepare the environment of agents’ movement and search, and to aggregate and analyze the results. To evaluate the model, data of year 2005 were used as the input and data of year 2010 were used for checking the results. By calibrating the parameters, the most desired configuration of the model was found in the second scenario, since the results were close to the reality as the Kappa index raised up to 78.17 percent. These results showed that the precision of the model to simulate land-use developments are of considerable quality. Thus, the model is able to detect the area that faced rapid urban expansions. Moreover, a comparison between the results of the two scenarios revealed that dividing the agents into categories with different aims and parameters will improve the outcome of the model. However, it is vitally important to determine the number of the agents in each category as well as their parameters precisely.

This study analyzes wind energy potentials of Zanjan province which located in northwest of Iran. Renewable energy plans are not fully environmentally safe and different renewable energy plans have different environmental impacts. Therefore, site selection is an important issue in the wind turbine installation and therefore, selecting an appropriate wind turbine site requires consideration of multiple alternative solution and evaluation criteria because of the system complexities. In this paper, using AHP and fuzzy TOPSIS techniques in conjunction with GIS, wind turbine potentials of the study area are evaluated. Criteria weights are obtained from pairwise comparison of identified criteria and after fuzzification of both criteria weights and criteria map layers using triangular fuzzy numbers, fuzzy TOPSIS technique is utilized to integrate and rank more suitable alternatives for the wind turbine installation. The results shows the ability of multi-criteria methods to evaluate suitable sites in geographic areas on one side and good potentials sites of Zanjan province to establish new energy plans on the other.

Autonomy plays a crucial role in the enhancement of important learning qualities in the learners. In that line of thinking, this study was launched to discover how English language learners exposed to an autonomously managed versus teacher controlled conditions would respond to the learning determinants. Two classes of English language learners at Isfahan University of Technology, Iran were thus treated under the two learning conditions. On the closing days of the semester, they were administered a questionnaire constructed based on three action phases of learning, namely, forethought, performance/volitional control, and self reflection. The questionnaire statements were rated on the Likert scale. The data analysis revealed that autonomy to a large extent determines the learners' views of learning. The class where autonomy was practiced showed a great deal of motivational boost or what is reinterpreted as forethought. The other two categories of learning, namely, their performance and self reflection, were also distinctly better perceived by the autonomous learners. The results point out the significance of preparing learners through autonomy for the prospective independent and critical learning.