Mosayeb Pahlavani

Gold investment as an inflationary hedge: cointegration evidence with allowance for endogenous structural breaks

This note tests for the presence of a stable long-run relationship between the price of gold and inflation in the United States from 1945 to 2006 and from 1973 to 2006. Since both the gold market and the inflationary regime have been subjected to structural change over time, a novel unit root testing procedure is employed which allows for the timing of significant breaks to be estimated, rather than assumed exogenous. After taking these breaks into account, a modified cointegration approach provides strong evidence of a cointegrating relationship between gold and inflation in the post-war period and since the early 1970s. The results lend support to the widely held view that direct and indirect gold investment can serve as an effective inflationary hedge.

The impact of financial deregulation on monetary aggregates and interest rates in Australia

This study employs all quarterly time series currently available to endogenously determine the timing of structural breaks for various monetary aggregates and interest rates in Australia over the last 30 years. The Innovational Outlier model (IO) and the Additive Outlier model (AO) are then used to test for nonstationarity. After accounting for the single most significant structural break, the results from both models clearly indicate that the null of at least one unit root cannot be rejected for almost all series examined. The structural breaks found coincide with important policy changes during the period of financial deregulation starting in the 1980s.

Identifying and Ranking Development Drivers of Knowledge-based Technology-Driven Companies (Case study: Fars Province Science and Technology Park)

The purpose of this Study study is to identify and rank the development drivers of knowledge-based, technology-driven businesses. This work is conducted as a case study in Fars Province Science and Technology Park. It is a descriptive survey in terms of purpose since a part of its data is collected through questionnaires and is of surveying type because it describes the existing conditions. The population of the study includes all the knowledge-based, technology-driven companies located in the mentioned Science and Technology Park. At the stage of identifying the drivers, 201 employees were randomly assigned by stratified sampling. For the prioritization of these drivers, 30 of the senior managers of those companies were deliberately consulted and the collected data were analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis as well as fuzzy hierarchy process analysis. The findings showed 37 drivers in five economic and legal, marketing and foreign relations, technological, cultural and human relationships and, ultimately, structural and informational dimensions. Drivers of communication with the world market, the world web as a factor for enhancing the world knowledge and a means for knowledge-driven development; ease of access to the technology and technical consulting; ease of access to the suppliers and providing public subsidies to knowledge-based companies while taking note of regional policy were considered as the most important drivers in the development of knowledge-based, technology-driven companies. Also, the dimensions of marketing and foreign relations, technological, economic and legal dimensions were identified as the most important dimensions respectively.