In this paper, the method of deriving the parameter ε of inequality aversion from a parametric distribution of incomes is proposed. It is assumed that a social decision-maker appraises welfare in income distributions by means of the constant inequality aversion utility function and that incomes...

This study analysed the contribution of economic growth and redistribution components to aggregate poverty changes in Ireland from 1987-2005, using the Shapley value decomposition approach. The analysis used the household disposable income data from the Household Budget Survey to calculate...

Drawing from the formal setting of the optimal tax theory (Mirrlees 1971), the paper identifies the level of Rawlsianism of some European social planner starting from the observation of the real data and redistribution systems and uses it to build a metric that allows measuring the degree of...

When measuring health inequality using ordinal data, analysts typically must choose between indices specifically based upon ordinal data and more standard indices using ordinal data which has been transformed into cardinal data. This paper compares inequality rankings across a number of...

In this paper we challenge the common interpretation of Rawls' Theory of Justice as Fairness by showing that this Theory, as outlined in the Restatement (Rawls 2001), goes well beyond the definition of a distributive value judgment, in such a way as to embrace efficiency issues as well. A simple...

An ideal state of development, when viewed with fantasy, is nothing but a state or condition where light touches everybody without refraction. The diagonal line of the Lorenz Curve Framework represents such an ideal condition. In the presence of inequality, however, it deviates or refracts from...