The effective factors on export of agricultural products and food industry of Iran with emphasis on competitiveness index of integrated real exchange rate

Iran, as a country with considerable climatic variations, is one of the most diverse regions of the world in terms of vegetation. This makes it possible to produce many agricultural products in the country. Although the figures represent relative growth of agricultural exports over several years, the volatility of these facts and figures is great, and in most cases, export performances are annually lower than the year forecast. With this approach, this study aimed at examining and evaluating the factors affecting the Iran’s exports of agricultural products and food industry during 1991-2014, with emphasis on competitiveness index of real exchange rate. For this purpose, the panel data approach was used to calculate the integrated bilateral real exchange rate. The study results showed a significantly positive effect of integrated real exchange rate on the Iranian export of agricultural and food industry products. The results also revealed that national income of importing countries had a significantly positive effect on export demand and its extent was greater than that of the integrated bilateral real exchange rate. Accordingly, with one percent increase in the competitiveness index of integrated bilateral real exchange rate and the national income, export demand increases by 0.19 and 1.41 percent, respectively. Finally, the results indicated that unlike the two aforementioned variables, the relative prices of exports had a significantly negative impact on export demand of Iran, so that during a long run, with one percent increase in the relative prices, export demand would reduce by 0.78 percent.