Malmquist and Hicks-Moorsteen Productivity Indices: An Empirical Comparison Focusing on Infeasibilities

In the literature, two main ratio-based productivity indices have been defined in terms of a primal technology notion. While the Malmquist productivity index has become very popular, it has the problem that it is not always well-defined. By contrast, the less popular Hicks Moorsteen productivity index is well-defined under weak conditions on technology. The purpose of this paper is to empirically illustrate the extent of this determinateness problem on some agricultural data sets under variations on the technology assumptions.