Iran's Comparative Advantage in Production of Saffron

Saffron as Iran's red gold is the most valuable agricultural products and the most expensive spice in the world, and plays an important role in country's export and after pistachio, is the most important nonoil export product. In this paper, we investigate protection indexes, comparative advantages in production and competitiveness of Iran's saffron in the world’s markets applying PAM method on 2008 data.The counting of DRC and UCS shows that Iran has a high comparative advantage in saffron production. results imply that subsidy excise on the production factors, tax impose on the product and in general, excise a indirect tax on the saffron production value added. Also counting UCd and UCx indexes show that saffron has competitiveness in 2008.