Background In recent years the use of time to death (TTD) variables in the modeling of individual health expenditures?has been of interest to health economics researchers. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of age and TTD?on hospital inpatient expenditure (HIE). ? Methods We used a claims database from Iran Health Insurance Organization of Tehran city that includes considerable?proportion of Tehran residents and contains information on insured individuals’ HIE. We included HIE of all insured?decedents (30 to 90 years old) who died during March 2013 and March 2014 (n = 1018). No sampling was required.?According to the decedents’ date of death, we extracted their last 24 months HIE. The period of time March 30, 2011?until

This study aims to investigate the dynamics of consumption distribution and to determine how it is affected by macroeconomic fluctuations based on two different types of household classifications: education level of household heads and consumption deciles. The urban Households Income and Expenditure dataset issued by the Statistical Center of Iran and a Factor Augmented Vector Auto Regressive model are used to assess the goals of this study. In other words, we study the consumption responses of different kinds of families to macroeconomic fluctuations. The following results were obtained from statistical analysis and estimation of the model. First, the standard deviation of the (log) real per capita consumption of the lowest group, familie

There is a growing attention to models which contain a broader set of economic data. In recent decade, introduction of Factor Augmented VAR models through augmentation of traditional VAR models with unobservable “factors” has made a new route to econometric modeling. In spite of the growing number of international papers and researches which have used FAVAR approach to modeling policy shocks to various economies, there is little about Iranian economy. So the paper is an attempt to fill the gap in the literature using an FAVAR model to analyze transmission of oil and monetary shocks to Iranian economy. The model contains 35 major macroeconomic annual variables spanning from 1974 to 2014. The results show that “real sector” of Iranian

Background: Considering the health economics aspect, the effect of population aging on the growth of medical expenditures is of great importance. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the growth rate of inpatient hospital expenditures (IHE) of older age groups compared to other age groups or testing of steepening hypothesis.Methods: In this descriptive-analytic study, monthly IHE data of insured patients from April 2011 to March 2014 was collected from Iran Health Insurance Organization database. The sample consisted of 29745 patients who were selected using stratified random sampling among the patients insured by different health insurance funds. Using the age cut method, patients were classified into 2 main age groups: older than

The aim of this study was to measure the potential of production and the capacity used in the pharmaceutical industry. Capacity use is the actual production rate to the potential output, which reflects the gap between actual production and production capacity.

Theoretically speaking, monetary policy transparency refers to the informational symmetry between the central bank and the private sector. High degree of transparency reduces uncertainty, improves the private-sector inference about central bank goals, and increases the effectiveness of monetary policy. This study analyzes the impact of financial and monetary freedom on monetary policy transparency. A set of 102 countries -categorized in low, middle and high income groups have been investigated for the period 1998-2010, since the monetary policy transparency data are not available from 2010 onwards. The panel cointegation test suggests that the long run relationship between variables exists. The empirical findings suggest that while GDP per

This paper examines the trend and determinants of terms of trade of Iran. Using a vector-error correction model (VECM), two models has been estimated for Iran’s economy. Terms of trade in Model I is the net barter terms of trade; and in Model II is the ratio of export to import unit values. Annual data of 1966-2012 and seasonal data of 1991-2011 have been used for respectively, Model I and II. Four variables have been identified as main explanatory elements of variation in terms of trade over time; these variables are output, exchange rate, trade openness and oil prices. VECM is used to capture the long-run interaction among variables. In first part of the article, the trend in terms of trade is evaluated to investigate whether there is a