Investigation of Technological Change and Scale Economies of Irrigated Wheat Production in Khorasan Razavi Province

This study aims mainly at investigating technological change and its principal components as well as analyzing scale economies of irrigated wheat production in Khorasan Razavi province. For these purposes, translog cost function and equations of the cost share within equation system, estimated by (Seemingly Unrelated Regression Equation) SURE, are used. The required data and statistics are related to the period of 1993-2010. The study results show that totally, the technological changes result in a reduced costs of production; in this regard, the technological change resulting from scale augmentation is the main component affecting its process. In addition, the results indicate that increasing returns to scale dominate for the irrigated wheat production in Khorasan Razavi province. Therefore, the policies increasing the production scale in farm are emphasized in the province.

JEL Classification: O33, D24, C30