Authors
1 Faculty member of the Faculty of Economics, Allameh Tabatabai University and Head of the Higher Education Institute of ECO Insurance
2 PhD student in Economics and a member of the faculty of the Faculty of Economics, Allameh Tabatabai University
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to study the Prospects of Economic Cooperation of ECO member countries through trade intensity, trade complementarity and trade bias indices. This study examined how the members, are serious in their economic integration and to what extent they can meet the needs and requirements of ECO member countries.
The result shoes that trade intensity between Iran and Turkey is higher compared with other countries, however, export intensity of Turkey to Iran is higher than the value of this indice for Iran's export to Turkey.
Trade intensity of Iran and Pakistan is higher than the average of this indice for the world trade. However, this indice has the minimum value for trade intensity of Iran and Pakistan. For other countries this indice does not seem to be important. Our estimate of Trade Complementarity indice shows that it is more important for trade between Iran and Pakistan and relatively much less in other countries. For other ECO member countries either the data were not available or the result was not very significant.
The indice of country's trade bias shoes that Iran's tendency to trade with Pakistan and Turkey is more than the trade orientation of those countries' with Iran. This indicates that these two countries have relatively more access to Iran's market as compared to Iran's access to those countries' markets. In other words, it shows that Iran's trade preference to trade with ECO member countries is much higher than those countries' trade preferences the trade with Iran. This implies that in order that ECO becomes successful, member countries have to take necessary steps to orient their trade policies towords member countries and taking economic and trade integration more seriously.
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