Comparison of Iran's Medicinal Plants Exporting Comparative Advantage With other Exporting Countries (Case study: Fennel, Badian, Anise and Corian)

This article investigate the export comparative advantage of Iran and the 11 major exporters using the Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantage (RSCA) index from 1995 - 2008. The values of the index were calculated by the data derived from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) website. According to the results, Syria, Iran, India, Turkey, Singapore, Egypt, Morocco, Bulgaria and Vietnam have comparative advantage and Canada and Germany don’t advantage. Also, China has export comparative advantage in some years. Although Iran has a comparative advantage in the export of selected medicinal plants, but its export competitiveness trend is declining. On the other hand, the analysis of Iran's competitive position in the export comparative advantage of selected medicinal plants compared to the other top exporting countries represents the demotion of the position from the third to the sixth in the world.