Investigation of the Performance of Iran's Sports Goods Export Industry and Some Developing Countries

Today, one of the important strategies for gross domestic product  growth is the export development strategy. The development of sports goods export is also one of the major issues in the sports economics. The study is to investigate the performance of Iran's sports goods export industry and some developing countries. This research is an applied research and, in terms of statistics and information gathering, is a type of documentary research. The statistical population of the study is 9 selected developing countries that their human development indexes are close to each other. Because of the small size of the community, 9 countries were selected as sample. Export data of five sports goods categories (Shoes, clothing, balls, sports boats and other goods) and some economic growth indicators were extracted from the World Bank and the International Trade Centerbased on the classification and codification of customs goods. Eviews9 software was used to analyze the data based on econometric methods and panel data and using Granger causality test, unit root test, co-integration test and static test. The results showed that the highest exportvolume of sports goods belonged to Indonesia, India, Turkey, Thailand, Pakistan, Malaysia, Russia, Iran and Oman respectively. There is also a bilateral short-term causality relationship between the exports growth of sports products and GDP growth. In general, and according to research findings, the development of sports products export has led to Iran's economic growth, increased productivity in manufacturing sectors, and the proper use of available resources in the economy.