An Investigation of the Concentration trend in the Selected Agricultural World Market and Its Effect on the Non-Oil Export Income of Iran

This research is concentrated on elaborating the structure of the selected agricultural export commodities in Iran, namely; apple, grape, date, pistachio.In order to find the functioning of these markets, the concentration ratios in each of these markets have been analysed for 1961-2000 period.This study is considering the structure of these markets from competition point of view, and explaining the concentration degree in supply side of the market as well demand side, and also evaluating the effect of the concentration on the non-oil export income of Iran.Investigating the market share of the above four commodities for Iran revealed that the market share for pistachio is the only one which has a significant effect in the concentration ratio of the world pistachio market and the concentration ratio in none of these markets have any significant effect in the average world price of that commodity. Finally it is found that only the structure of pistachio market has a significant effect on the non-oil income of Iran.