Investigation of effective factors on non-oil exports with emphasis on non-price variables

One of the ways for encouraging economic development in oil exporting countries like Iran (which is known as an oil-dependent economy) is moving toward diversification of export revenues rapidly by increasing non-oil exports. This goal is not accessible without a comprehensive survey and examination of factors that affects non-oil exports condition. Although, in many developed countries, export and import analysis is performed in framework of relevant price variables (Also in our country most of the surveys have not gone beyond this framework).But it seems that institutional, scientific, technological and management factors have much greater effect on export variables in Iran in comparison to other countries. Hence, in this article we have tried to go beyond previous studies by adding real and non-price factors to quantitative model of non-oil export in order to estimate their impacts.In order to do this, we have considered non-oil exports to be a function of real exchange rate, total factor productivity, gross national product and the degree of openness of the economy. In addition, we have used ARDL for estimating the model and investigating the effects of each of these factors on non-oil export during 1975-2007. Finding of this paper shows that non-oil export is significantly and effectively, dependant on non-price variables. The results of our estimation show that productivity, degree of economic openness and GDP have positive effects on non-oil export. Albeit according to basic problems in production and export and according to our estimations, we claim that exchange rate does not have a significant impact on non-oil export.