Microdata analysis of the consequences of free trade port policy: the case of Iran free zones

ABSTRACT

Creating free trade zones as a policy to motivate new investment and improve the local economic indicators might be of some benefits. Following of this policy in Iranian major port, however, resulted vice versa by aggravating the current account balance that is higher imports and the same horizon diminished export sums. We derive the micro data of trade for the Iranian major Imam port according to code arrangements of harmonic system (HS), which permits the clustering of different goods categories. Then we extracted the sums of survey data for the years before and after Imam port became free trade zone and applied fixed effect difference in difference (DID) method to capture the heterogeneity of unobserved variables. Our control port of analysis was Rajaee port the policy did not implemented. Results show that just as Imam free port’s Current Account Balance deteriorated by increasing import and dampening of export sums.