Investigating the Efficiency of Investment in Infrastructure Using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) Method

The purpose of the current research is to investigate the efficiency of investment in the country's infrastructure by provinces using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The statistical population of the research is all the provinces of Iran and the time period is 10 years, from 2011 to 2020. The information was collected from the yearbooks published by the website of the National Statistics Center of Iran. In this research, using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method, and using the statistical population and the investigated time period, separately and generally, the efficiency of investment in infrastructures (transportation, healthcare, communication and telecommunications, and water and sewage) has been investigated. In this research, considering the growth of infrastructures and the budget allocated to each infrastructure in each province, we will examine the issue of how many provinces have maximum efficiency (desirable) and how many provinces have not had maximum efficiency in the year under review. The results indicate that in more than half of our statistical population, the investigated infrastructures did not have maximum efficiency, which means that the budget allocated to that infrastructural area was not used in a desirable manner.