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This study aims to evaluate the effects of price liberalization on energy consumption intensity, because price liberalization leads to improved productivity, energy consumption management, and consumption reform. Although the energy consumption of large-scale factories and industries has increased dramatically, and the energies losses have an increment in the power transmission lines, this policy can result in decreasing the energy consumption intensity due to the changes in consumption patterns. If there is a correlation between two variables, the price can be a valid variable to control cost and increase consumption efficiency. The augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF) and the Chi-squared tests are also employed to investigate the maneuverability of these variables in the first-order contrast. In this case study, the energy consumption intensity response to price changes using the data gathered between 1988–2020, has gained a confidence interval of these reactions at 95%. The proposed vector autoregressive (VAR) model has forecasted the action and reaction of the end-user, to investigate the future shocks between 2020–2050, considering a new price shock, in the Iranian energy market for the first time. The research findings have shown that energy price liberalization leads to the energy intensity improvement, however, the end-user (shocking) reactions should be investigated to implement a more sustainable policy that eases the new energy price rises.

I use a behavioral model to analyze how reforms in transition countries (i.e., price liberalization and competition policy) may affect their business cycle. The novelty of such a model is that the business cycle is generated endogenously interacting with confidence factors. It is assumed that agents do not form rational expectations, and they use simple rules and evaluate the forecasting performances of these rules ex-post. This paper generates policy implications that shock therapy may not be the ideal option for these countries as it may generate macroeconomic instability. The result of this model is in line with the recent macroeconomic literature that the size and the sequencing of reforms matter.

In 2012, The Netherlands established the so-called \"free market experiment\", which allowed providers of dental care to set the prices for their dental services themselves. The introduction of market mechanisms is intended to improve the quality of care and to contribute to cost containment, but increasing health expenditures for citizens have been observed in this context. Using large-volume health insurance claims data and exploiting the 2012 experiment in Dutch dental care, we identified the effects of a liberalization of service prices. Using pooled regression with individual fixed effects, we analyzed changes in utilization patterns of prevention-oriented dental services in response to the experiment as well as the elasticities in demand in response to variations in out-of-pocket (OOP) prices. We found substantial increases in prices and patients' OOP contributions for dental services following the liberalization with differences in increases between types of services. In response to the experiment, the proportion of treatment sessions containing preventive-oriented services decreased significantly by 3.4% among adults and by 5.3% for children and adolescents. Estimates of short-run price elasticities of demand for different services point towards differences in price sensitivity. One potential explanation for the observed variations in prices and utilization could be different extents of asymmetric information for first-stage and follow-on services. Price liberalization seems to have affected the composition of treatment sessions towards a decreasing use of preventive services, suggesting a shift in the reason for seeing a dental care provider from a regular-preventive perspective to a symptom-based restorative approach.

In recent years, the IMF has released a growing number of reports and other documents covering economic and financial developments and trends in member countries.

As the world marketplace becomes ever more globalized, much is at stake for the prosperity of hundreds of millions of people in Europe and Central Asia as the region’s transition process continues through its second decade. Understanding the underlying dynamics shaping the contours and most salient impacts of international integration that have emerged—and likely to emerge prospectively—in the region is thus a crucial challenge for the medium term economic development agenda, not only for policymakers in the countries on themselves, but also for their trading partners, the international financial institutions, the donor community and the future of the world trading system as a whole. This book addresses this challenge.