An Alternative Measure for Green Growth in the U.S. Agriculture Using the Malmquist-Luenberger Productivity Index

This study introduces a Malmquist-Luenberger (ML) productivity index using non-parametric linear programming (LP) methods as an alternative measure of green growth by taking into account both desirable and undesirable outputs together as opposed to conventional measures considered only desir-able outputs. We used a panel data set consisting of agricultural activity in 50 states in the U.S. since 1990 as a case study. We found that 1) ML productivity in U.S. agriculture increased by 1.3% per year across the 50 states, which suggests that U.S. agriculture may be slowly approaching a lower carbon green growth economy, 2) Ignoring undesirable bad outputs overestimates annual pro-ductivity growth, 3) The average annual ML productivity varies considerably across states, ranging from a 2% decrease for Alaska to an increase of 7% for Arizona, and 4) The fluctuation of cumulative ML productivity follows similar patterns of technical efficiency during the 1992–2007 periods.