Industrial Structure and the Minimum Efficient Scale of Iran's Industry Case study of Food Processing Industry

This article focuses on estimating the minimum efficient scale of iran’s food processing industry according to the ISIC two, three and four digit codes, during the third development plan. In this study different methods of estimating the minimum efficient scale are introduced and the Comanor & Wilson method is chosen as the method of estimating the MES with applying three variables: assets, production and employment. The results show that the minimum efficient scale of production of food processing industry doesn’t have a stable tendency during these years. From the view of employment variable these variations in the current five years (except the year 1983) has decreasing tendency. This issue shows that the current industry is shrinking according to the employment variable. We can consider the decrease in the number of employers as the increase in the level of technology, increase in the productivity of employment or the market qualifications. Moreover, this trend can be in accordance with the worldwide variations and increase in the role of small and medium firms in economics.