Nonparametric Effect of Technological Distance on Iran’s Bilateral Trade and its Trading Partners

Abstract

In recent years, most studies in the field of technology and trade have focused on the critical importance of technological change in explaining international trade patterns. Technological innovation is not taking place in all countries and it does not spread to all countries at the same time, therefore technological distance would exist among countries.This paper has explained the effect of technological distance on Iran’s trade relations, specifying a semi-parametric gravity model over 1995-2015. As expected, the estimation results of semi-parametric gravity model show that the effect of GDP on bilateral trade relations between Iran and each of the selected trading partners is positive and significant. The population of the exporter has negative impact while the importer’s population has positive effect on bilateral trade. Our empirical results indicate that the relationship between technological distance and bilateral trade is nonparametric, implying a general effect of technology on Iran’s bilateral trade relations. More clearly, in some ranges of the technological distance a negative effect appears on trade relations, while in other fractions of the relevant distance, the impact is positive, leading to an increase in bilateral trade relations between Iran and its trading partners.

Keywords

• technological distance
• gravity model
• semi-parametric analysis
• smoothing spline
• random effects