“…In general, there are several studies like Adkins et al (2002), Milner and Weyman-Jones (2003), Gust and Marquez (2004), Jayasuriya and Wodon (2005), Kneller and Stevens (2006), Thompson and Garbacz (2007), Repkine (2008), Henry et al (2009), Dimelis and Papaioannou (2011), Jarraya (2014), Lemonakis et al (2016), and Gkypali et al (2019), which have performed cross-country analysis of productive efficiency and tried to identify various factors affecting efficiency. However, in the context of South Asian region, although profuse literature focused on economic growth aspect (e.g., Devarajan & Nabi, 2006; Sahoo & Dash, 2012; Rahman et al, 2019; Rosegrant & Evenson, 1992) yet there is hardly any study specific to South Asia that analyzed intercountry and intertemporal productive efficiency in the region to the best of our knowledge.…”