Studying Pistachio World Market Structure with Emphasis on Iranian Market Power

  Pistachio export, after hand-woven carpet, accounts for the highest share of non oil export revenue with more than 1 billion dollars. Iran has continually accounted for more than half of pistachios trade, however the prices has experienced a declining trend during two last decades. The objective of this study is to investigate the changes occurred in pistachio trade market structure and to analysis changes in market power of Iran. Regarding the changes happened in combination of the Iranian pistachio importing countries over last two decades, analysis were performed for 1989-1996 and 1997-2005 separately. The analysis instruments are demand function and market concentration indices. The findings showed that changes in combination of importing countries has resulted in decrees of Iranian market power from 0.66 to 0.36, causing a rise in foreign consumers surplus from 43 in 1989-1996 to more than 173 billion USDA in next period on average. However, the chance of experiencing market power remains for Iran. The concentration indices also showed an increasing trend of competition for pistachio market structure during last two decades. It was also found that pistachios trade market tends to perform as a closed monopoly. Based on the findings, Iran is proposed to find new markets, leading to decrease the buyers share.     JEL Classification : D42, L12, Q17