Investigating the Market Structure and Comparative Advantage of Medicinal Plants Export in Iran and World Selected Countries

Due to the increasing importance of medicinal plants, In order to determine Iran's comparative advantage in the export of medicinal plants.

Indices Revealed Comparative Advantages and Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantages and of apparent comparative advantage, symmetric apparent comparative advantage and chi-square were applied, In order to determine global export market structure of medicinal plants, two indices of concentration ratio and Herfindahl-Hirschman were used. The required information was extracted from the FAO and Trade Map site in the period 2018-2011.

The results indicated that Iran had a comparative advantage export in the medical planet’s export with 0909, 1301 and 130212 cods and was able to compete in global markets. Moreover, the results of  market structure showed that in the global export market of medicinal plants fennel, anise, badian, cumin and juniper berries (code 0909) have oligopoly structure, extracts of liquorice (code 130212) type of oliyogopoly market  and gum group (code 1301) follow the structure of the monopolistic market. Also, 60-50% of the export of medicinal plants with code 0909 assigned to India and Syria, 70-50% of the export of medicinal plants with code 130212 to the United States, Iran, China, France, Germany, UAE and Turkmenistan and 40-55% of exports with the code 1301 were in the hands of India, France, Nigeria, Sudan, USA, Indonesia and Thailand. The average share of Iran in the export of medicinal plants with code 0909 (2.87), code 130212 (17.37) and code 1301 (1.17) percent.

Therefore, given that Iran has potential in order to expand and develop the export of these products, it is necessary to implement measures such as; Reduce the seller concentration markets, process and improve the goods packaging in global markets and supporting of exporter by government suggested.