چكيده لاتين :
The aim of this study is to investigate the context by which veterinary services may affect technical
efficiency (TE) of Iranian dairy farms. A data envelopment analysis (DEA) was applied to a randomsample
of 840 dairy farms from six provinces across Iran to estimate regional frontier and metafrontier production
functions and also to calculate corresponding TE of these farms. The relationship between the leve ls of
veterinary services and TE scores were then examined using correlation analysis, t-test, and analysis of
variance (ANOVA). The results ind icated that mean technical efficiency estimated based on the regional
frontier production function for selected provinces varies between 0.720 and 0.867 while ranges between
0.445 and 0.595 when evaluated based on the metafrontier production function . Also, our findings showed
that veterinary services have a positive effect on TE score . This implies that TE can be improved by
utilizing higher levels of veterinary services. Furthermore, access to more suitable veterinary services was
recognized to be a major determinant of technical operation as wasthe case in Tehran.
