F. MIRZAEI ET AL.
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this paper is to try to iden tify: 1) The export comparative
advantage of Iranian hen egg; 2) Its changing during the
time; 3) The comparative advantage of Iranian hen egg in
competition with other countries which are famous in
trade and production of hen egg.
2. Material and Methods
This paper looks at the performance of hen egg export
and examines the comparative advantages indices like:
RCA, RSCA and RC for Iran and world main producers
over the period 1990-2005. The source of data from 19 90-
2005 are supplied by FAO in 2006. We used from RCA
method as follows:
2.1.
RCA =XijXtjXinXtn
The concept of revealed comparative advantage (RCA) is
grounded on conventional trade theory. The original RCA
index is formulated by Balassa [3], can be written as:
Where X represen ts exports value (1000$), i is a countr y
(Iran), j is a commodity (hen eggs), t is a set of com-
modities (agricultural produ cts) and n is a set of countries
(world), RCA is based on observed trade patterns, it
measures a country’s export of a commodity in relation
to its total exports and to the corresponding export per-
formance of a set of countries. If RCA >1, then a com-
parative advantage is revealed. Many researchers have
attempted to refin e revealed comparative advantage [4-7].
A problem with the Balassa index is that its value is
asymmetric; it varies from one to infinity for products in
which a country has a revealed comparative advantage,
but only from zero to one for commodities with a com-
parative disadvantage. Dalum et al. [8] proposed a revealed
symmetric comparative advantage (RSCA) index to alle-
viate the skewness problem as follows:
2.2.
RSCA=RCA-1RCA+1
The RSCA ranges is from minus one to plus one and
avoids the problem of zero val ues. we focused on hen eggs
and agricultural sectors and investig ate th e stability in th e
pattern of the RCA indices for Iran. Also, using market
share as a measure of competitiveness, indicators of com-
petitiveness can be developed. These indicators are ex post
measures based on past performances. Vollrath [7] devel-
oped a comprehensive index called revealed competitive
advantage (RC). This index includes imports (M) as well
as exports (X). Avoids the problem of double counting
and permits intra-industry trade. The revealed compete-
tive advantage ind ex is written as:
in Xtn
Min Mtn
2.3.RC =XijXtjX
-Mij Mtj
The revealed competitive advantage index as a measure
of competitiveness shows how well a country’s particular
economic sector competes abroad and at home. A posi-
tive RC measure demonstrates that country i has a com-
petitive edge in producing and trading commodity j.
3. Results and Discussion
The distribution of the RCA indices in the start and end
years of the period is indicated non unifo rmity, so RSCA
and RC indices confirm the results gained from RCA
indices (Table 1, Figure 1). Also this research has been
shown the trend of share of Iran’s production from world
production, share of Iran’s export from Iran’s production
and share of Iran’s export from world export in terms of
weight and value (Table 2, Figure 2). The contribution
of Iran’s hen egg production in relation to world had in-
creasing process, so that according to FAO, Iran has
gained the first grade in the Middle East, 7th in Asia and
17th in the world but contribution of Iran’s export from
total hen egg export in the world market don’t have in-
creasing process. It seems. Instability and in coordination
of production policies and elasticity of market is the rea-
son of fluctuating of contribution of Iran’s production in
the region over th e studied period. Furthermore, the con-
tribution value of Iran’s hen egg export from total value
of hen egg export in the world is less than the contribu-
tion of Iran’s export weight from total weight in the
world. With this comparison, we find out that in relation
to average price of each kilograms of the product in re-
gion, Iran gains less price for each kilograms of its export.
This matter is possibly for the reason of either low qual-
ity of Iran’s hen egg from average quality of hen egg of
regional producers or impossibility of timely availability
to region markets particularly lack of bargaining power,
which it is in agreement with Salami et al. findings [9]
According to results, we can conclude that with regard to
allocation of first grade of production of mentioned
product to Iran, the RCA indices in the world has fluctu-
ating rate to the comparative advantage that in case of
coo r dination of decision-making centers of production and
trade and awareness from existing atmosphere in region,
obtaining the continuous comparative advantage export
for Iran’s hen egg production will be av ailable. For these
reasons, we can’t recommend that Iran regarding to fluc-
tuable RCA indices, having changeable RSCA and non-
substantiativeness RC, must retreat from recent decade of
productio n p ol i c i es for hen egg product i o n.
4. Conclusion
The distribution of the RCA indices indicated non uni-
formity and was confirmed with the indices of RSCA and
RC. The contribution of hen egg production has been
increasing but the country’s total hen egg production in
the world is not stable due to problems in coordination of
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