Measuring the efficiency of Iranian electricity distribution companies, a combined approach to bargaining game with DEA

Many models have been proposed for measuring performance of business agencies up to now. The goal of this research is providing a new approach for evaluation and measurement of efficiencies of national power distribution companies. This approach is provided as a combination of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Game Theory for evaluation of decision-making units by a large scale of actions. In the case study pertaining to Classic DEA models, decision-making units are often exggeratedly considered as efficient units. For removing this problem and decreasing the number of variables, bargaining game as a collaborative one is combined with DEA model. The results of standard efficiency indicate that 27 out of 39 studied companies have efficiency of 100%. Despite Classic DEA, in which many companies are efficient, the combination method distinguishes optimal scores of companies and assigns different ranks to them. The results show that standard efficiency performances of companies have been averagely promoted up to 7.2% by output increment and up to 6.8% by decrement of inputs. Also, the results of combination of bargaining game and DEA show that distribution companies in Tabriz, Fars, Tehran, Khorasan Razavi, and Kohkiluyeh & Buyerahmad provinces occupy the first five ranks, and West Azarbayjan, Gilan, and Hamedan occupy the lowest ranks.