مطالب

During past years, economists have been endeavoring to determine both relationship and causality direction between real macroeconomic and nominal economic variables. In this regard, many studies have been carried out on the relation between money and inflation, resulting in the introduction of the notion of money neutrality which implies that permanent change of money supply just affects the nominal variables and has no lasting and real effect on production and employment. Furthermore, even when constant changes of money growth have no real impact whatsoever (except on real monetary equilibriums); money is stated to be super neutral in the long run. Although the majority of economists (with disparate schools of thought) concur with long-term money neutrality, there are still different opinions on the short-term and middle-term neutrality of the money. In following some major of them are presented. This paper investigates the existence of money neutrality in the Iranian economy applying Fisher and Seater approach during 1973 and 2014. The time series analysis, ARIMA model, is used to examine the problem and we consider various monetary aggregates, M1 and M2. Results show that we cannot reject the hypothesis test of money neutrality in Iran. Because all variables are non-stationary and integrated of order one I (1) we can only test the money neutrality. So it is strongly verified that money is neutral and it does not have any significant effects on real non-oil GDP in Iran. Also it was shown that the results are not sensitive to different aggregate money supply.

Employing an explanatory sequential design, the present study investigated the effect of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) blog-mediated writing instruction on the students’ learner autonomy. A number of 46 learners who were the students of two intact classes were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. Over a 16-week semester, the control group students (n=21) were taught based on regular in-class writing instruction and the students in the experimental group (n=25) made use of blogs in addition to the traditional in-class writing instruction. The data were collected through administering a learner autonomy instrument, consisting of metacognitive, cognitive, social, and affective components, and conducting semi-structured interviews. The results of both quantitative and qualitative data revealed that the blog-mediated writing instruction contributed to enhancing learner autonomy of the participants. More specifically, the students who experienced blog-mediated writing activities showed improvement in metacognitive and cognitive components of learner autonomy. The findings offer significant implications for EFL teachers.

A correlational survey research design was utilized to investigate self-regulated Learning (SRL) and teacher-student interaction factors that had been realized to have contributive roles in EFL learners' academic success. A sample of 218 EFL learners (male = 102 and female = 116) was drawn with the aid of a prior sample size calculator for the structural equation models from 645 students. They were within the age range of 18-45 and were enrolled at Islamic Azad University, Tabriz Branch. The structural equation model (SEM) hypothesis testing procedure revealed that the teacher-student interaction directly and significantly influenced learners' academic accomplishments. Likewise, the obtained results indicate that the impact of the teacher-student interaction on EFL learners' academic achievement is mediated by the effects of SRL. Correspondingly, the obtained results indicate that the theorized model fits the data. The causal contribution of psychological factors, consisting of the teacher-student interaction and SRL, to EFL learners’ academic achievement was validated. The findings of this exploratory research have certain implications for classroom practice which are elaborated in detail in this paper.