Assessing the Effect of Iran’s Membership in Trade Agreements on Fishery Exports: Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood Approach

Trade agreements play an important role in reducing trade barriers and increasing trade flows among countries. Empirical researches indicate that the presence in trade agreements is not guarantee for increasing exports in all countries and products. Therefore, considering the importance of fishery exports in recent years and lack of study in this area, the aim of this paper is investigating the effect of Iran’s membership in trade agreements on fishery exports. To achieve the purpose, the gravity model and information of Iran’s fishery exports to 25 Asian countries with 88% share is used during the period of 2001-2016. Based on the results, Iran’s membership in the trade agreements has had a positive and significant effect on Iran’s fishery exports to trading partners. The results of the interaction between trade agreements and trade barriers showed that trade agreements reduced the effect of trade barriers such as geographical distance. So, it is suggested that exporters take advantage of the capacity created through the presence of trade agreements to identify new markets and develop appropriate long-term marketing programs to export to these markets.