Measuring the Efficiency of Technology-Based Firms in Iran: A Sbm-Dea Approach

Abstract

Technology-based firms (TBFs) have a key role in a dynamic economy. The efficiency of this group of firms is one of the important issues in policy and decision-making for the execution of strategic plans. This paper aims to provide a new approach for assessing the input-output efficiency of TBFs. This study develops slack based measure data envelopment analysis (SBM-DEA) model to analyze the efficiency of TBFs in different sectors. In the analysis, the amount of funding received from the government, the research and development expenditure, and the number of personnel are input variables and the amount of income is the output variable. Moreover, the ANOVA test is used to compare the average efficiency of 9 different sectors. The proposed model was applied in a case study with 146 TBFs in science and technology parks for periods from 2021 to 2023. From the study, we conclude that most firms are inefficient and there are only 4 efficient firms. Results show that among sectors, there is no significant variation in the level of efficiency. To make the commercialization facility more effective, we recommend considering other tools for stimulating the demand side, developing and marketing technology, as well as empowering companies in marketing in parallel.

Keywords: Technology-based firms (TBFs), Slack-based measure (SBM), Data envelopment analysis (DEA), Efficiency, Iran.