In this paper, we use a conditional-convergence econometric model to investigate whether the Cohesion Policy and the structural funds this policy mobilises, affect the European economies in such a way that the poorer regions catch up with the rich ones. In this model, regional convergence...

Stochastic dominance has typically been used with a special emphasis on risk and inequality reduction something captured by the concavity of the utility function in the expected utility model. We claim that the applicability of the stochastic dominance approach goes far beyond risk and...

We show that it is possible to reconcile the utilitarian and welfarist principles under the requirement of unanimity provided that the set of profiles over which the consensus is attained is rich enough. More precisely, we identify a closedness condition which, if satisfied by a class of...

The few pages that Adam Smith devoted to lotteries, mainly in the Wealth of Nations (1776) did not receive much attention. They nonetheless constituted an opportunity to introduce a sophisticated analysis of individual decision under risk. Through various examples, Smith pointed out a...

Most welfare studies are based on the assumption that wellbeing is monotonically related to the variables used for the analysis. While this assumption can be regarded as reasonable for many dimensions of wellbeing like income, education, or empowerment, there are some cases where it is...

Although it is endowed with many interesting properties, the theory of decision-making under risk by Loomes and Sugden [1986] has never been given an axiomatics. In this paper, we make up for this omission because their lottery-dependent functional is endowed with many interesting properties to...

This paper provides a general framework for a unifying treatment of stochastic dominance of any degree and of any type (direct or inverse for each final or intermediary level). It gives the conditions for the congruence between stochastic dominance and classes of utility functions in this...

The paper deals with poverty orderings when the value of multidimensional attributes can be compared on a same scale, such as with income of different types or from different members of the same household. The dominance criteria extend the power of earlier multidimensional dominance tests (see...

In this paper, we characterize subjective probability beliefs leading to a higher equilibrium market price of risk. We establish that Abel's result on the impact of doubt on the risk premium is not correct (see Abel, A., 2002. An exploration of the effects of pessimism and doubt on asset...

Available characterizations of the various notions of stochastic dominance concern continuous random variables. Yet, discrete random variables are often used either in pedagogical presentations of stochastic dominance or in experimental tests of this notion. This note provides complete...