Testing the New Structural Economics Hypothesis at the Iranian Provinces Level: Using GMM Approach

The new structural economics approach to industrial policy is to follow a strategy of comparative advantage. According to this thinking, determining the relative prices of production factors by the market mechanism and providing the soft and hard infrastructure required by the government for industries that are compatible with the production factor’s structure, are the two determining factors of industrial development strategy. Considering that one of the key hypotheses of this approach is to increase economic growth as a result of comparative advantage following policy, this study has tried to test this hypothesis in the provinces of Iran in the period of 2005-2017 using the GMM. The findings of this study show that the hypothesis is confirmed at the level of Iranian provinces; Also, the change in the model estimation method did not change the research findings, so it is reliable. Therefore, it is recommended that policy makers consider the policy of following the comparative advantage of the region in designing the industrial development strategy.