Assessing the Effects of Government Incentive Programs on Export Performance

Abstract

Iran, despite having a high potential for exports, holds a small share in international markets and, despite the upward trend since the third Development Plan, is still far from optimal conditions. Given the importance of developing non-oil exports, government stimulus programs for export and making them effective are considered as one of the main strategies in line with the policy of macro-economic growth. This study aims at evaluating the effect of government development programs on export performance as well as assessing the performance of construction materials exporters with an emphasis on stimulus programs. For this purpose, 38 top exporting companies in the field of construction materials in 2014 were chosen as the study population. The data were gathered by questionnaires and analysed by the structural equations method with SPSS and LISREL software programs. The result indicated that the managers' perceptions of the export market, export knowledge export strategies, and stimulus programs using variables determined about 71 percent of the export performance of these companies. According to the derived coefficients, export strategies variable had the greatest effect. Also, a one-percent increase in the government stimulus programs could increase the export commitment for 0.29%, the export strategies for 0.22%, the export performance for 0.29%, the managers' perceptions of the export market for 0.33%, and the export knowledge for0.51%.