A New Approach to Evaluate the Economic Efficiency and Productivity of Agriculture Sector: The Application of Window Data Envelopment Analysis (WDEA)

Wheat is a major agricultural crop in the Sistan region with a key role in local economy. The present study aimed to economically explore the efficiency of wheat production over the 2014-2016 period with the window data envelopment analysis (WDEA) approach. Also, the Malmquist productivity index was employed to assess the productivity of wheat growers in the study site under variable return to scale with the input-oriented approach. The results show that average annual efficiency of Zabol, Zehak and Hirmand counties are 0.96, 0.95, and 0.96, respectively, implying that these agricultural units are efficient. Also, the values for the Malmquist productivity index show that the highest average variation of total productivity of 0.96 was for Hirmand County in the studied period, showing the low productivity. According to the results, an influential factor underpinning the variations of total productivity of wheat growers was found to be technological variations. Thus, it is recommended to develop some plans to improve the efficiency and productivity of wheat in environment-agriculture sectors of the studied region.