Comparative Analysis of Models and Factors Affecting Regional Advantageous Determination: Potential Advantageous versus Revealed Advantageous (The Case of Khorasan Region)

Regional production advantages determination is important and considered in the areas of operational development policy making for a country. For determination of regional advantages, there are two approaches: the first approach is to identify qualitative and quantitative advantage with respect to environmental factors (potential advantage) and the second approach is to identify the advantages according to the rate of growth in different sectors, based on historical records (the revealed advantages). The main questions of this study are: i. what are the factors and indicators of revealed and potential regional production advantages? And how are they different? ii. According to the theoretical framework, what are the revealed and potential advantages of the Khorasan region provinces? And how are the results at these two models related?The research results indicate that the outcomes of these two methods are relatively mismatched.