In this paper, we characterize and empirically implement robust normative criteria for comparing societies on the basis of their allocations of risks among their members. Risks are modelled as lotteries on the set of distributions of state-contingent pecuniary consequences. Individuals are...

When equivalence scales are used to compute the well-being of individuals, two possible weighting methods of the different household types have been proposed, the first one resorts to the family size and the second to the equivalence scale itself. The latter is criticized on the ground that it...

This paper provides a comparison of 12 OECD countries on the basis of the (multidimensional) inequality in both disposable income and access to public goods. The public goods considered, measured at the regional level, are infant mortality and pupils/teacher ratios at public schools. The...

To analyze equality of opportunity we examine the influence of family characteristics on the distribution of outcome for a given generation. Here, we study changes in equality of opportunity for income acquisition between 1977 and 1993, conditional on father's income level and income rank, using...

This paper examines the extent and evolution of intergenerational earnings mobility in France. We use data from five waves of the French Education-Training-Employment (FQP) surveys covering the period 1964 to 1993. Our estimation procedure follows Björklund and Jäntti (1997)’s two-sample...

This paper constitutes the first research that examines the historical origin of the debate about "U.S. competitiveness". It takes a special interest in a "myth" widely spread that concern over "U.S. competitiveness" arose between the beginning of the late 1970s and 1986. In fact, these...

We propose the concept of a universal social ordering, defined on the set of pairs of an allocation and a preference profile of any finite population. It is meant to unify evaluations and comparisons of social states with populations of possibly different sizes with various characteristics. The...

An early death is, undoubtedly, a serious disadvantage. However, the compensation of short-lived individuals has remained so far largely unexplored, probably because it appears infeasible. Indeed, short-lived agents can hardly be identified ex ante, and cannot be compensated ex post. We argue...

This paper provides a normative appraisal of the Canadian equalization transfers system. For that sake, the two-dimensional dominance criteria introduced by Atkinson and Bourguignon(RES, 1982) are used to compare the distributions of private and public good before and after equalization...

Considering an economy with two goods {a private good and a household good with a variable degree of publicness {and identical individuals, the paper investigates the implications for economies of size of two extreme households' decision rules: (i) the cooperative model, where households...