Hassan Kalbasi; Vali Gerivani
Volume 5, Issue 17 , February 2004, , Pages 99-124
Abstract
The issue of Iran’s Accession to WTO has been widely discussed in academic, business and political cycles of the nation Significant questions have been raised from industrialists and policy makers, as to the efficiency and competitiveness of new Iranian firms, and their comparative ...
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The issue of Iran’s Accession to WTO has been widely discussed in academic, business and political cycles of the nation Significant questions have been raised from industrialists and policy makers, as to the efficiency and competitiveness of new Iranian firms, and their comparative advantages in the world market. The role of government policies for promotion of competitive industries has also been discussed.
So, this paper presents a method which draws on economic theory to measure cost competitiveness and its sources at the firm and industry levels. The concept of competitiveness that we use in the present study is one of cost competitiveness as measured by unit cost ratio. In other words, a firm or an industry is deemed to be competitive if its unit costs are less than or equal to the unit costs of its domestic or international rivals before or after joining to WTO.
Also this study focuses on the sources of competitive advantage. Two types of them are distinguished: first, the real sources of competitiveness such as factor productivity and factor abundance, which many lead to comparative advantage, and second, various price distortions of products and factors of productions, which may either enhance or diminish competitiveness. To do so we measure and analyze the cost competitiveness of “Mobarake Steel Complex”. We will measure the cost competitiveness of this company in aggregate level at first step, and for every product at the second step.
