Planning and Budgeting

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Social capital has recently turned into an outstanding subject in development literature and considering its socio-economic and political implications in our country, and Iran’s 20-year vision document has required its improvement. One of the crucial issues of social capital is its formation and developments whose understanding appears a must and prerequisite to improve it. A brief glance at Iran’s social capital developments reveals that despite phenomena such as revolution, war, extensive influence of religion, and increase of education levels (which are all regarded the factors of social capital increase according to the present theories) the amount of social capital has diminished in Iran. Relying on institutional and discourse theories, this article introduces a new theoretical framework with the aim of analyzing this problem. The findings of this research show that the main cause of changes in Iran’s social capital is the discourse changes and its decrease could be analyzed on this basis.

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Studies conducted on the behavior of costs indicate that costs do not change proportionately to the fluctuations of selling. In other words, costs increase in proportion to selling increases, yet they do not decrease proportionate to selling decreases such a disproportionate behavior of costs is known as ‘sticky costs’. There are two prevailing theories on this phenomenon. The first theory holds that sticky costs are as a result of deliberate decisions made by managers while the latter holds that sticky costs might be the result of the fact that costs could not be reduced simultaneously and as speedily as selling decreases. So far, the deliberate decisions of managers have not been tested. Therefore, this study tries to test the former theory, i.e. deliberate decisions through managers’ selling predictions for future. The results of the research, based on the data related to the enterprises admitted to Tehran Stock Exchange for a five year period (2005-2009) shows that when the managers are optimistic about the selling in the future, the sticky prices increase.

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Recently, institutional explanations have turned into the ruling ones to expound the causes of resource curse. From among the institutional approaches, this article picks out the theory of North and his colleagues, who believe that the underlying challenge of economic growth in countries is not confined to the quality of one or several certain institutions and that it could be explained by the method of developing an order in the society. They hold that the way to develop the order influences the institutional quality and as a result it affects the economic growth. The findings shows that the econometric surveys within 1970-2010 reaffirm the theory of North and his colleagues on the countries that enjoy natural resources in other words, the countries enjoying resources that have a democratic order did not face resource curse and could manage to use their resources in line with their economic growth.

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Instead of surveying the effects of institutions on economic growth through statistical analysis, this study tries to review them from the standpoint of institutional theorists with the aim of giving some explanations on economic growth. The study reveals that formulating appropriate policies to expedite economic growth, which is indeed resulted from the impacts of various institutional elements on economic growth, requires more than merely pure quantitative surveys. This means that to do so, the researchers should take into account the factors such as market-creating institutional components, institutional change know-how, and socio-political institutions' impact on economic performance. On the other hand, apparently, from among the various solutions to forge economic growth, the one proposed by North and his colleagues, i.e. moving toward democratic order to reach economic growth is the best sustainable approach.

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So far various theories have been proposed in a try to explain the influential factors on development as well as the reasons of difference among the levels of development in countries. This article tries to use comparative analysis to study Max Weber’s ideas (as a distinguished sociologist of German Historical School) and those of Douglas North (as an institutional economist). This study indicates that in addition to German Historical School’s effect on the formation of institutional economics paradigm, there are outstanding similarities and differences between the ideas of Weber and North. The findings indicate that North has used Weber’s explanation regarding the effects of factors such as culture, values and beliefs on the economic performance. Meanwhile, North uses the concept of institution to better explain how these factors influence the economic performance. On the other hand, the institutional approach, which has recently been the focus of attention, seemingly provides a proper approach to include social variables in economic issues.

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Knowledge assets and intellectual capital are the major leverages for profitability and maintaining competitive advantages of corporations in today’s knowledge-based world. The difference between book value and market value of corporations, specifically since 1980’s onwards, which is analytically attributed to increased corporate investments in intellectual capital, indicates the importance of intellectual capital by itself. The purpose of this research is to investigate the association between the intellectual capital and the market value of corporations listed in Tehran Stock Exchange. The researchers used both “pulic’s model” and “modified pulic’s model” to measure intellectual capital. The population data sample was restricted to 130 corporations during 2005-2009. According to the results of testing the hypotheses through panel data least squares regression method, the intellectual capital has significantly positive correlation with the corporation’s market value. Moreover, the findings verified that “modified pulic’s model” presented more authoritative explanation than that of the preliminary “pulic’s model”. In the end, the research demonstrated that from among the various elements composing the intellectual capital, it was “human capital efficiency” that had the most significantly positive correlation with the corporation’s market value.

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