Iran's Intra-Industry Trade and Selected Trading Partners with an Environmental Approach

Intra-industry trade (IIT) in final goods, which depends on transport costs, seasonal trade and even product diversification, is often subject to lower pressures from commercial, political and control levels due to competition in industry for higher quality and higher value added, which is a controlling factor for the environment. The purpose of this article is to determine the type of cross-trade between Iran and selected trading partners and to identify its environmental impact. For this purpose, the different types of Iran’s IIT with its selected trading partners were calculated based on the Globel-Lloyd (GL), Fontan, Friedenberg and Peridy (FFP) and the Azhar and Eliot (AE) indexes over the period (2001-2015). Emprical Results show that a significant share of intra-industry trade between Iran and selected countries (including neighbours, countries from East Asia and Europe) relies on vertical intra-industry trade, indicating that there is little competitive pressure on Iranian tradable goods. According to Azhar and Eliot's index, the major share of intra-industry trade is made from low quality goods. Hence, choosing such a trade strategy has not led to improvement of Iran's environmental quality. The implication of the empirical findings figures out the policy of IIT flows expansion in order to preserve the quality of the country’s environment.