Comparing Actual Efficiency and Productivity of Iranian Manufacturing Industries with an Ideal Index

In this paper we have tried to evaluate efficiency and productivity performance of Iranian manufacturing industries during the period 1995-2015. For this purpose we have used the data of Iranian two digits manufacturing Industries based on ISIC classification and used technique of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Malamquist Index. To compare the relative performance of manufacturing industries, we have then compared this performance of Iranian industries with an ideal Index which we have constructed based on the average performance of the three developed industrialized economies of USA, Germany and Japan. The result shows that not only productivity and efficiency of Iranian manufacturing industries are very low in almost all the branches in absolute terms, but also inefficiency are more pronounced when compared with our estimated ideal Index. Our disaggregation of efficiencies performance also shows that in almost all industrial branches allocative inefficiency is much higher than technical inefficiencies, indicating that , government macroeconomic mismanagement leads to inflationary pressures and high costs.