Iranian Journal of Trade Studies
Year:2011 | Volume:15 | Issue:60|Papers Count:9

One of the industries that may strongly be influenced by the globalization process isthe steel industry. The present study sought to investigate the effects of globalization on this industry in Iran.In general to investigate the consequences of entering the World Trade Organization on Ahwaz Pipe Mills Company several indicators and methods have been used. In this way, by using the concept of comparative advantage, competitive advantage and support coefficients analysis the consequences of entering the WTO organization on pipe factories (1, 3, 4) and cover plants (1, 2 and 3) have been discussed. The results indicate the high Comparative advantage of the pipe factories (1, 3, 4) and cover plants (1, 2 and 3) both. While the pipe factories (1, 3 and 4) has the 2Iranian Journal of Trade Studies competitive cost advantage less than that of the cover Plants (1, 2 and 3). Also there is less support for the cover plants sector both in nominal and effective terms.

This paper wants to answer to the question "what is the equivalent amount of money for compensating welfare loss of households through price adjustment of bread, rice, oil and sugar?" We cluster urban and rural households based on homogeneity of consumption behaviors and estimating Linear Approximate Almost Ideal Demand Systems (LA\AIDS) for different clusters, and also calculate welfare indices (equivalent income, compensated variation and the cost of living index). The %100 price adjustment of bread, increase the cost of living of urban cluster1 households by %11.86, and for the same rural households the figure will be %15.63.

Nowadays many firms are looking for reduction of their costs including labor costs, in order to improve their competitiveness in the global markets. For this, firms are encouraged to employ non-permanent and informal labor force. These types of employees due to high institutional flexibility increase the power of the firm in reaction to market changes and fluctuations in demands. These employees, however, weaken the power of market for reconciliation to technological improvements as they show little training and skill. This paper studies the effect of flexibility of these sorts of employees on competitiveness of industries with high and medium technology in Iran.In order to this, the paper at first studies the existence of positive or negative effect of informal labor flexibility on competitiveness of a firm through expanding theoretical principles. Then, the paper using panel data approach investigates the effect in industries with high technologies in Iran (in of ISIC code) and for time period 1377 to 1383. The results reveal the fact that this effect is negative in activities and industries with high technology. Therefore, the firms require a decreased use of informal labor force in order to improve their competitiveness.

Competitiveness and its reinforcement for growing and surviving is one of the most important economic agenda in the world. This subject is the result of challenging economic world. In our country also this subject is recently observable, by emphasizing on process of industrial development. The process of industrial development is the process of verifying current situation of different industries based on different criterion and besides recognizing strengths and weaknesses of them. Then it can give some strategies for improving future navigations. In Iran following this subject by recognizing and evaluation of the best industries with the purpose of increasing non-oil exports has been regarded. So evaluating the industries is of importance and presenting new methods in this way is important. This article will provide a new method based on Porter and FMADM techniques for selecting and ranking of better industries.

Regarding Islamic Conferece Organization's aim to establish a Common Market among Islamic countries and expedite the establishment of Regional Commercial ties, various islamic countries have been divided into five groups according to their regions. In the meanwhile this research seeks to investigate the establishment of regional commercial ties between Iran and Central Asian Countries due to common economic interests. The procedure of this research is based on gravity model and panel data considering 7 variables including Population, Geographical distance, degree of Openness, GDP, amount of bilateral commerce, Per capita income and Linder index for panel data of Iran and other five Central Asian Countries for the years 1998-2006. Results showed commercial potential to establishment of regional commercial ties with Central Asian Countries. It is enough to obtain the agreement of two or three countries to manage opportunities properly within signed contracts to attract other countries of region for establishment of regional commercial ties. Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are suggested to achive this purpose.

Based on economic theories, one of the effective factors of economic growth is investment. There are many ways to provide capital, that foreign direct investment is the best of them. Because of FDI inflows is providing capital and additionally causes technology, human capital expert, management and knowledge entrance.This study investigates the role of democracy and property rights on foreign direct investment attraction in D8 and G7 countries in 1995-2006. The findings show that democracy has a negative and significant and a property right has a positive and significant effect on FDI inflows in both of case study countries. Open trade in G7 and D8 countries has a positive and significant and real effective exchange rate has a negative and significant effect on FDI inflows. Also economic development degree has a positive and significant effect on FDI inflows in the G7 countries and inflation rate has a negative and significant effect on FDI inflows in the D8 countries.

The economic growth of the country is a continuous process and with it comes feeding the basic necessities like housing and infrastructure, so cement growth follows economic growth and sometimes accelerates it. But cement industry is highly dependent on emissions-intensive energy sources and also is a capital intensive industry.Hence, characterizing the effective economic factors on cement demand and forecasting cement consumption for strategic planning guidance is useful.This article attempts to forecast cement consumption by methods of components market and inference of demand function (using autoregressive distributed lag model), for the year 2008. The results with regard to the past years-that country's cement consumption was restricted by supply-show cement demand in Iran is a function of cement price, government infrastructure expenditures and value added of building sector. Accordingly, the government has an effective role in regulating the cement market and its fluctuations, by setting price, allocating development funds to expand production capacity of the economy, reforming culture of consumption and helping the export marketing.

Regarding the importance of pistachio export for Iran and increasing share of rivals and before missing significant quantity of our proportion from world market, we need sufficient plan for pistachio export; so we studied situation of pistachio production and marketing in Iran and other major producers. The results of these studies and interviewing with Experts and major exporters, conducted us to necessity of applying quality criteria as a mandated standard in order to improve market situations. Then we tried to construct appropriate structure for forecasting export quantity and price of exported pistachio using artificial neural networks and regarding the outputs of this model, we tried to examine the amount of influence of this mandated standard.The results reveal that by applying mandated quality standard, revenue resulted from pistachio export in target year i.e.1386 will increase about 205, 314, 000, 000 Rials. Furthermore aflatoxin event will be reduced when mandated quality standards are present. Even if such event occurs, we will see 25, 664 tons reduction in our pistachio export while this reduction will be about 51, 329 tons in the first year when no mandated quality standard is applied; So applying such standard is quite reasonable.