Investigating the Comparative Advantage in Sub Sector of Metallic and Nonmetallic Minerals (Basic Metals) in Iran and it's Place in the World

Comparative advantage indicates the power of a country in producing a commodity or service by lower cost in comparing to the other countries. This concept is one of the applications in international economics. Metallic and nonmetallic minerals industry is one of the important and considerable industries in our country which has high potential for export. In this study, comparative advantage of this industry was investigated in Iran using three indices include revealed comparative advantage, location quotient with respect to value added and location quotient with respect to employment. Time series data during 1963 to 1999 were used. Also, Mobarakeh Company as the most important unit in this industry, was investigated by domestic resource cost index. Results indicate that in four years of fifth period of development program from 1991 to 1994 metallic and nonmetallic minerals industry has comparative advantage. This advantage is more pertain to metallic minerals sector. In the fifth period, the average of revealed comparative advantage index is equal to 1.37, meanwhile indices of quotient location with respect to value added an employment were in the least their amount. The result of domestic resource cost index for Mobarakeh Steel Company showed that the corporate has gained 434 Rls for each kilogram of steel. Also, the results of investigating factors affecting the revealed comparative advantages index indicated that, export with the elasticity of 0.68 has the high effect on the growth of this index.