The Factors Influencing Exports in Iranian Industry with the Emphasis on Market Structure

Changes introduced to the theories of advantage and the rejection of enterprises homogeneity hypothesis revealed the characteristics of enterprises and environmental factors such as the degree of market competitiveness in trade. It diverted the trade approaches from macroeconomic level and price variables like foreign exchange and inflation rates into the microeconomic level including the size of enterprises، research and development expenditures، labor skills and market structure. This research formulates a model composed of price factors، market structure and other characteristics of enterprises with the aim of identifying the factors affecting industry-level exports with a four-digit ISIC code for 99 industries that have exports in Iran. The results indicate that the foreign exchange rate besides the variables related to the specific characteristics of each industry such as research and development expenditures، the intensity of skills، the influence of imports، market structure (the amount of concentration) as well as the labor to capital ratio are positively and significantly effective on the level of exports in industry.