Abstract

Technical efficiency analysis has a vital role in fishing management and decommissioning programs. In this context, ignoring the variation across the regions in the field of natural endowment and level of economic development may lead to biased estimates of efficiency scores. Therefore, efficiency analysis in the southern coastal provinces of Iran, which is the aim of this study, was investigated by a common metafrontier production function that was identical for all studied provinces. The required data was obtained from a random sample of 520 fishery vessels. The results of the estimating metafrontier showed that mean technical efficiency for selected provinces varies between 0.408 and 0.542, while ranging between 0.650 and 0.728 when assessed based on the regional frontier. The highest mean technical efficiency based on metafrontier is devoted to Sistan-va-Baluchestan, while Bushehr has the lowest mean technical efficiency. The results also indicated that the main reasons, beyond the fact that Sistan-va-Baluchestan has the highest technical operation in comparison with other provinces are access to more suitable vessels and especially, access to the deeper water in the Oman Sea and Indian Ocean to fish the big pelagic species.

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