Assessing sustainability of Islamic countries via data envelopment analysis (DEA)

Abstract: Given international regulations, countries try to improve their sustainability. The objective of this paper is to assess the sustainability of Islamic countries and to present optimal strategies to promote their sustainability. In developing Islamic countries, increasing level of production requires clean technologies to achieve or promote their level of sustainable development. In this research, given natural disposability and managerial disposability, a new inverse data envelopment analysis model based on range adjusted measure is developed. We assess sustainability of Islamic countries. Then, we suggest how to improve sustainability of the Islamic countries. Our new model determines optimal inputs and outputs given natural disposability and managerial disposability so that the sustainability score of countries is unchanged. Graphic abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.]