Measuring Iran's Economy Status Indicators in Global Value Chains and Comparison with Selected Countries

​Global value chains are a complex product of the international fragmentation of production expansion that has revolutionized the production organization of the global economy and increased trade in services and intermediary goods. This new form of trade has allowed developing countries to benefit from international trade with specialization and comparative advantage in tasks, without having a comparative advantage in an entire industry. Given the increasing importance of global value chains, the goal of this paper is to analyze the position of the Iranian economy in the global value chains for 1990-2015. For this purpose, using the UNCTAD-EORA World Input-Output Tables, the indices of participation, position and length of value chain are calculated for the Iranian economy and its 24 sectors. The results show that the Iranian economychr('39')s forward integration into global value chains has increased, but its backward integration has reduced and Iran’s economy has moved to the upstream of value chain. Moreover, for a benefit from global value chains, Iran is pursuing a competing path, in polluting and energy-intensive sectors such as the oil, mining, petrochemical and metal industries, and its considerable capacity in the service sectors remains neglected.