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Creating and supporting small and medium-sized industries in economic development programs and the emphasis on improving efficiency and productivity in the policies adopted, shows the vital position of such industries in developed as well as developing economies. In general, the most important role of these industries in the economic development process can be summarized as; effective employment, production and supply chain management, creating value added and reducing dependence on unnecessary commodity imports. Since any improvement in the efficiency of small scale industries will bring more equitable distribution of income, the main purpose of this study is to measure the performance of various technical, management and scale efficiencies in subsectors of small scale industries and provide policy recommendations to the inefficient industries. For this purpose, the principal component analysis (PCA) and factor analysis is used to determine the variables of the model and the DEA is used for evaluation and sensitivity analysis of the factors affecting the efficiency and productivity of small scale industries during the period 2002 - 2007. The results show that out of 22 industries, only 8 ones are found to be perfectly efficient. Productivity measurement of these industries according to the "Malmquist" index reveals that, the trend of productivity enjoys positive growth.

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Various socio-economic factors affect employment. In this regard, offering credit facilities has attracted the attention of economic policy-makers. This study aims to evaluate the impact of credit facilities on employment in Iranian industrial cooperatives. For this purpose, the Constant Elasticity Substitution(CES) production function and panel data regression analysis are used to analyze the relationship between credit facilities and  employment in provincial industrial cooperatives during the period 2006-2010. The results show that the offering credit facility is of significant effect on employment. The elasticity coefficient of employment with respect to credit facilities and technical services facilities is 0.1. In addition, the elasticity of employment with respect to credit facilities of fastest-growing and entrepreneur firms is 0.05. These figures indicate the different effects of facilities on employment in industrial cooperatives, and fastest-growing and entrepreneur firms. 

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Examining the strategies related to the promotion of human resource productivity, and quality level of laborers using wage payment is considered as the most important factor responsible for quantitative as well as qualitative economic growth of the society. Obviously, if the employees working in any part of the economic sector have high productivity, the overall performance of that sector will be improved in accordance with productivity. The aim of this study is to find out whether any increment in wage payments of the laborers as an effective measure can cause a substantial increase in the labor productivity and value added in industrial cooperatives. In order to study the effects of compensatory earnings by the employees on their productivity, the Cobb-Douglas model and panel data regression were used to analyze productivity performance of laborers working in industrial cooperatives across 30 provinces during the period 2006-2011. Moreover, the regression analysis on panel data of these cooperatives was applied to examine which section of compensatory payments, i.e., wage or other payments, has the highest effect on labor productivity. The results show that the variable of compensatory payments is of significant and positive effect on value added of industrial cooperatives in Iran.  However, the direct wages have higher impact than other payments on labor productivity.