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The Persian Gulf region is one of the strategic and important regions in the world which has always attracted the attention of regional and trans-regional powers. In the contemporary world, the Persian Gulf region and the countries of the Southwest Asia region have been among the most challenging and controversial regions in the world. This region has been the hotbed of geopolitical crises and the site of ideological conflicts and the active hotspot of political and regional crises. In addition to the domestic context, the presence and involvement of trans-regional and global powers in activating and intensifying these challenges and crises have played a very crucial role. Although the macro-structures of the global geopolitical system have overshadowed this space, the powers within the region (the Islamic Republic of Iran and Saudi Arabia) have played a leading role in shaping the geopolitical atmosphere of the current situation, which is based on ideological and geopolitical values. The current study seeks to examine the ideological and geopolitical implications of Iran and Saudi Arabia for the region and the need to adopt a geo-economic strategy to overcome intra-regional geopolitical challenges. The results show that the adoption of a geo-economic strategy by Iran and Saudi Arabia can pave the way for a dialogue of cooperation and convergence and pave the way for entering a new regional geopolitical system for regional development and regionalism.

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Minthodes oramanatae Gilasian & Ziegler sp. nov. is described as new to science from western province of Kermanshah, Iran. This species is separated from other Minthodes species by its shiny black abdomen, narrow frons, long postpedicel, presence of basal scutellar marginal setae, short petiole of wing cell r₄₊₅ and absence of marginal setae on abdominal tergite 2. Photographs of the male habitus and terminalia are given. The comparison of the morphological characters of M. oramanatae Gilasian & Ziegler sp. nov. with its closely related species M. atra (Kugler, 1971) and M. rossica (Mesnil, 1963) is provided. Photographs of the habitus and male terminalia of M. atra are presented for the first time. The identification key to the Iranian Minthodes species is provided.

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In Economics literature many studies tried to examine whether stocks are perfect hedge against inflation. The answer is not conclusive. In this paper, using data from Tehran stock market, the relationship between inflation and stock returns during April 1991 till March 2009 is reexamined. The empirical results have shown that Fisher Hypothesis, which asserts that stocks are perfect hedge against inflation, has been rejected and also it is revealed that stocks are a weak hedge against inflation in Tehran stock market. Fama has already tried to explain why Fisher hypothesis did not hold in some situations. In this paper Fama hypothesis is examined and it is found out that Fama explanation for the rejection of the Fisher hypothesis is hardly acceptable and the negative relationship between inflation and real rate of return of the stocks in Tehran stock market can be attributed to temporary part of the inflation.

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In this paper, it is tried to propose a robust model for predicting inflation in Iran among alternative models. For doing this, monthly data from April 1990 to the end of September 2009 is used. Firstly, it is tried to determine whether the CPI data is chaotic or stochastic. It is shown that it is chaotic rather than stochastic. Therefore, it is predictable. Then, a stochastic differential equation model is estimated (specifically a geometric Brownian motion) for CPI in Iran. In order to compare the prediction power of the model other alternative models of prediction like ARMA, non-linear GARCH, EGARCH, TGARCH are also used to extrapolate inflation during a six month prediction period. Based on RMSE, MAE, U-Tail, it is revealed that stochastic differential equation model is much more robust than the alternative models mentioned above.

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Rapid increase in housing price has been a national difficulty for the people and public officials in recent years in Iran. Therefore, the study of factors affecting increased housing prices is of great importance. In this paper, the effects of some key variables, including land price, construction cost, the volume of bank loans to housing sector, exchange rate, stock price index, the number of residential buildings and household income on the price of housing have been studied in Kermanshah. For analyzing the effects of above-mentioned variables on price of houses, an auto regressive distributed lag model has been estimated using quarterly data over the period 1991-2009. Additionally, the error correction model was estimated in order to evaluate the adjustment speed of dynamic model to the long-run one. The estimation results indicate that the macroeconomic variables are of high power in explaining the behavior of house price and its fluctuations.

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With regard to the role of fiscal policy in reducing the financial crises, determining the magnitude of the fiscal policy multiplier after the 2007-2008 global crisis became one of the most challenging issues in the field of fiscal policy. In general, the magnitude of the fiscal policy multiplier is estimated larger than one according to the Keynesian viewpoint and smaller than one based on neoclassical viewpoint. The difference in the magnitude of the multiplier comes from the fact that economists believe that the fiscal policy multiplier is influenced by the degree of economic openness, the exchange rate regime, the way monetary policy is applied and the business cycle. Differences about the magnitude of the fiscal policy multiplier among schools of economic thought are evident in both theoretical and empirical dimensions. In this regard, this paper tries to estimate fiscal policy multiplier using structural vector autoregressive model (Blanchard and Peroti, 2002 method and Markov switching approach (Hall, 2009) using the seasonal data for Iran during the period (1990: 1-2017:3). The results of the structural vector autoregressive model showed that the instantaneous multiplier, 10-quarter cumulative multiplier, and the 20-quarter cumulative multiplier of the government expenditure were equal to 0.281, 0.304, and 0.445, respectively. In addition, the corresponding multipliers for taxes were -0. 079, - 0.107 and - 0.171, respectively. Since the fiscal policy multiplier varies based on the economic conditions, the results of the nonlinear Markov switching model showed that the government expenditure multiplier during the recession is 0.828 and it is larger than the same coefficient during the boom period (0.108), on one hand. On the other hand, the tax multiplier during the boom period (-0.194) is larger than its value during the period of recession (-0.092 ).
 

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In the macroeconomics and international economics literature, the rate of change in domestic prices as a result of exchange rate changes is known as the degree of exchange rate pass-through. This is important because the shocks to the economy are transmitted from the exchange rate channel to the relative prices of the economy. In addition, the degree of exchange rate pass-through is affected by microeconomic and macroeconomic variables, so that the degree of exchange rate pass-through will change along with their changes. Therefore, in the present study, the impact of exchange rate on domestic prices is estimated by using the Time-varying Parameter Factor Augmented Structural VAR with Stochastic Volatility (TVP-SFAVAR-SV) and applying seasonal data from 1990 to 2018. First, the latent variable of the amount of speculative activities in the Iranian economy is modeled and estimated. The results show that the highest speculation belongs to the periods 1994 -1996, 1998-1999 and 2011- 2012. Also, the shock to the speculative activities variable in the period under study has led to an increase in inflation. The estimated exchange rate pass-through coefficient has not been constant. Historical variance decomposition analysis of exchange rate pass-through in the presence of the effective factors also shows that the almost all exchange rate fluctuations can be explained by inflation and exchange rate fluctuations, and production gaps.

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