This note provides an alternative derivation of the leximin principle using the framework of Harsanyi’s (1953) equi-probability model. We demonstrate that the leximin principle is concluded if and only if the preference ordering of the impartial observer obeys strong monotonicity and complete...

We examine the causal effect of neighborhood segregation on black entrepreneurship. We address neighborhood sorting by analyzing city averages and omitted variable bias by instrumenting for segregation using historical railroad configurations. We find that segregation has a significant positive...

Recent research shows that the merger of economies increases aggregate stress. This paper shows that there is no income distribution policy which will ensure that the wellbeing of the individuals belonging to merging economies does not fall below their pre-merger level.

The paper shows explicitly how the overlapping of groups impacts between-group inequality by generalizing a result on the group-wise decomposition of the Gini index to more than two groups. It is demonstrated that the ratio of Yitzhaki’s measure of between-group inequality to the conventional...

Inequality indices for self-assessed health and life satisfaction are typically constructed as functions of the cumulative distribution function. We present a unified methodology for the estimation of the resulting inequality indices. We also obtain explicit standard error formulas in the...

We show how to minimize the probability of misclassifying individuals as being poor or not poor when data on some of their relevant attributes are missing, but an estimate of the population distribution of attributes is available.

A bottom poor sensitive Gini coefficient (pgini) is defined by replacing income observations with their reciprocal values in the Gini coefficient. The underlying true income share function can be derived approximately using the maximum entropy method given the pgini coefficient.

In a recent article, Fragnelli and Gagliardo [Fragnelli, V., Gagliardo, S., (2012). Cooperative models for allocating an object. Economics Letters 117, 227–229] propose several procedures to solve a basic problem of fair allocation. We scrutinize their proposal and contextualize it into recent...

We provide new characterisations of the equal surplus division value. This way, the difference between the Shapley value, the equal surplus division value, and the equal division value is pinpointed to one axiom.

In this letter, we overcome the existing shortages with respect to the assignment of individuals to reference groups and are the first to show that individual aversion to relative deprivation plays a decisive role in shaping migration preferences.