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Aim and Introduction
Over the past few decades, the housing market has experienced recurrent boom-and-bust cycles and considerable price volatility. A significant portion of this volatility can be attributed to speculative activities. Speculators often purchase properties with the expectation of future price increases, which contributes to the formation of housing price bubble. These bubbles not only destabilize the economy but also lead to serious social consequences. As such, policymakers have consistently focused on identifying the determinants of speculative behavior and housing market bubbles. One of the government’s regulatory instruments in this domain is the transfer tax, intended to influence trader behavior and mitigate housing price bubbles. This study investigates the effect of transfer tax policies on the housing price bubble in Shiraz city.
Methodology
This research employs an Agent-Based Model (ABM) to simulate the dynamic processes of the housing market and analyze the contributing factors to price bubble formation. The model incorporates four key agents active in the housing market: sellers, buyers (including both personal-consumption and speculative buyers), developers, and real estate agencies. Data and statistics up to the beginning of 1401 (2022) were incorporated into the model to forecast housing prices in Shiraz through 1409 (2030).
Three scenarios were tested by varying the proportion of speculative buyers—30%, 50%, and 70%—and applying different transfer tax rates of 1% and 5%. The simulation explores how these variables influence the magnitude and growth of the housing price bubble under different market conditions.
Results and Discussion
The findings reveal that, regardless of the proportion of speculative buyers, the implementation of transfer taxes can reduce the housing price bubble in Shiraz. However, the extent of this effect varies with market conditions. These results align with prior studies, such as Chen (2017) and Izadkhasthi et al. (2018), which found that transfer taxes can mitigate housing price volatility.
Proponents of transfer taxes argue that speculative activities drive housing price bubbles and that such taxes increase transaction costs, thereby reducing speculative trading and contributing to market stability. For instance, with a 70% speculative buyer share and a 5% tax rate, the housing price bubble decreased by approximately 25% between 1401 and 1409. In contrast, a 1% tax rate under the same market conditions led to a 22% reduction in the bubble. However, when only 30% of buyers were speculative, the tax had a comparatively more minor effect, indicating that the efficacy of the tax diminishes when fewer speculators are present.
Conclusion
The results suggest that increasing the transfer tax rate does not necessarily reduce the housing price bubble. In scenarios with 30%, 40%, and 50% speculative buyer presence, higher average tax rates did not result in a significant reduction in the housing bubble and, in some cases, slightly intensified it. This supports earlier warnings in financial economics literature—such as those by Schwert and Seguin (1993) – that excessive transaction taxes may deter informed traders, who play a vital role in maintaining market efficiency and price stability. Similarly, Friedman (1953) emphasized the stabilizing role of rational traders in financial markets.
According to the simulation results, Article 59 of Iran’s Direct Taxes Law, which stipulates a 5% transfer tax, may help reduce housing bubbles in Shiraz and potentially nationwide. However, the optimal tax rate should be adaptive and context-specific, considering the varying proportions of speculative and non-speculative market participants. Therefore, the government is advised to collect comprehensive data on the structure of the housing market, assess the share of speculative transactions, and adjust tax rates accordingly.
Moreover, since the transfer tax only applies to documented transactions, many informal or contract-based transactions—particularly those occurring prior to property completion—escape taxation. In such cases, builders may sell properties through promissory notes or undocumented agreements, which are difficult to track and tax. As a result, it is recommended that the government strengthen monitoring mechanisms for such transactions. This includes identifying and intercepting units exchanged informally or without official documentation to ensure both effective taxation and bubble control.

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Abstract In current settlement planning settlements are either rural or urban. In reality human settlements are more diverse than this dichotomy and current definitions of rural and urban settlements are not comprehensive from political, administrative and scientific points of view and show lack of attention to various factors that shape human settlements and their status. In other words changing the status of a settlement based on public demand might not change the real status of a settlement. Application of models based on fuzzy logic as a relative approach in identification and classification of human settlements provides a better and more diverse framework for human settlement grouping based on various social, environmental and economic factors. Changing the status of a settlement from rural to urban without considering the role of such factors will not only increase the public expenditures, but also will increase public expectations and demand for inefficient services. Identification of those rural settlements with higher membership degree to urban settlements will help planners and policy makers to make better decisions when trying to accept or reject the status of a settlement. The main aim of this study is to assess the use fuzzy logic to identify rural settlements that are suitable for getting the city status. Rural settlement in Tehran province, Iran, has been selected as case study.

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Disasters provide physical, social, political and environmental development windows of opportunities that can be used not only to reconstruct the impacted areas, but also to improve the socio-economic and physical conditions of the impacted population in the long run. It is argued, however, that there is a limited time frame of approximately four years for such opportunities to be utilized efficiently. Bam earthquake in December 2003 that killed more than 27000 and devastated the historical part of the city opened several unique opportunities for mitigation, socio-economic and physical development. This paper examines the roles that various stakeholders played in the Bam reconstruction and their contribution to the success and failure of utilizing disaster development opportunities. The results show that stakeholders’ collaboration and participation, knowledge and experience, long-term and holistic visions, division of labour and use of resources have had significant influence on the success and failure of using post-disaster opportunities.

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Aim and Introduction 
The pension system is of special place in the employment regulations of the private and public sectors of all countries of the world. In addition, pension funds are known as one of the most sensitive and complex financial institutions in today's world, whose main goal is to preserve the livelihood and dignity of people in old age. Pension funds have been created to provide social rights for citizens, and a long-term horizon is one of the main features of such funds. By receiving insurance premiums from the insured and investing the resources gathered in the early years and the so-called youth period of the fund, pension funds provide pensions for retirees during their maturity. The process of maturity of pension funds occurs naturally and if it is accompanied by the aging of the country's population, it will intensify. According to the International Monetary Fund, pension expenditures in the Social Security Organization and the civil serpents' Pension Fund will increase from 5.3% in 2015 to 11% in 2040 and 19.6% of GDP in 2080 and in the future, a large part of the country's budget should be spent on paying pensions.

Methodology
This study seeks to simulate and apply corrective policies to improve the financial misalignment in the Iranian pension system using dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model based on the overlapping generations (OLG) model. In this regard, impulse response functions were used to examine the effects of the proposed parametric corrections. The DSGE models are stochastic, microeconomic-founded, provide the possibility of dynamic evaluation of parametric changes as well as random changes of exogenous variables of the system, and give inter-temporal optimization of the behavior of economic agents. In addition, the mechanism of intergenerational transfer in the pension funds, can be well evaluated and studied by these models, so it seems to be a suitable tool for studying the effects of demographic parametric changes on the financial balance of pension funds.

Findings
The results show that positive shocks to the variables of years of service, birth rate, and average years of insurance, the financial misalignment of pension funds decreases. According to the results, linking the retirement age with life expectancy and increasing the years of premium payment can reduce financial misalignment and increase financial stability in the Iranian pension system.

Discussion and Conclusion
The government's decision to implement reforms in Iran's pension system is essential, taking into account social considerations and the step-by-step nature of these reforms. However, according to our findings, the following policies should be presented to improve the financial imbalance of Iran's pension system:
1. The results of the positive shock analysis to the years of service variable showed that the later retirement of people reduces economic dissatisfaction, and considering the past and projected increase in life expectancy in Iran, increasing the retirement age is justified and logical. According to global experience, the average retirement age should be increased from 60 to 63 years for men and from 55 to 58 years for women (one year for every two years). Also, in the future, it is suggested that the average retirement age be linked to the growth of life expectancy.
2. The analysis results of the positive shock to the birth rate variable showed that the young population reduces the financial imbalance. Therefore, it is necessary to implement policies to encourage birth in the coming years, because the population aging phenomenon will have destructive effects on the stability of the pension system.
3. A positive shock to the average variable of years of insurance has positive effects on reducing the financial imbalance of pension funds. In this regard, it is suggested to change the calculation of pensions in all pension funds, including state, military, and social security organizations, based on the average salary of the last three to five years of employment, which it is currently based on the average of the previous two years.
 

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Financial imbalances and disparity between resources and expenditures in Iranian pension funds have made the need for reforms inevitable. Today, the share of government aid from public expenditures to two Civil and Military pension funds has increased from about 11 percent in 2013 to about 19 percent in 2021, and this trend has been increasing in recent years. However, despite the perception of the crisis in the pension system of various actors, these reforms have not been implemented. In this regard, the present study seeks pathology and finds a solution to solve the crisis of the Iranian pension system during 2013-2021. Due to the existence of different actors and stakeholders, one of the non-quantitative methods of game theory models, called the graph model, was used to resolve the conflicts. This model is an important tool for modeling and analyzing complex problems, expresses the most likely consequences of various problems in the world, and finally provide guidelines for its improvement. The modeling results of the retirement crisis show that the fourth mode of the model, i.e. the state of reform, is more likely to occur. Therefore, the current situation is not a stable one for all players, and they are motivated to leave. According to the results, limiting government support, changing the pension system, and carrying out structural and parametric reforms will improve the current situation.