This empirical application investigates the eventual presence of credit constraints using a panel of French farmers. The credit-constrained profit maximization model proposed by F�re, Grosskopf, and Lee is extended in three ways. First, we rephrase the model in terms of directional distance functions to allow duality with the profit function. Second, we model credit constraints in the short-run and investment constraints in the long-run using short- and long-run profit functions. Third, we lag the expenditure constraint one year to account for the separation between planning and production. We find empirical evidence of credit and investment constraints. Financially unconstrained farmers are larger, perform better, and seem to benefit from a virtuous circle where access to financial markets allows better productive choices. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

This contribution establishes, from a theoretical viewpoint, the relations between the Malmquist productivity indices, that measure in either input or output orientations, and the Luenberger productivity indices, that can simultaneously contract inputs and expand outputs, but that can also measure in either input or output orientations. The main result is that a Malmquist productivity index overestimates productivity changes, since it provides productivity measures that are nearly twice those given by the Luenberger productivity index looking for simultaneous contractions of inputs and expansions of outputs. This relationship is empirically illustrated using data from 20 OECD countries over the 1974-97 period.

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