Productivity Evaluation of Iranian Insurance Industry: A Non-Parametric Malmquist Approach

The paper studies the changes of total factor productivity forall Iranian Insurance companies for the period 2003-2009. In order to measure the changes in productivity, data envelopment analysis (DEA) method is applied. DEA method is used to estimate output oriented Malmquist productivity index. To determine effective factors on the total factor productivity growth of insurance companies tobit regression is used. The results of the study confirm the positive effect of liberalization policy adopted by government on productivity growth. The results also indicate that dimension and the field of activity have significant positive effect on productivity growth.