We examine individuals’ distributional orderings in a number of contexts. This is done by using a questionnaire-experiment that is presented to respondents in any one of seven “flavors” or interpretations of the basic distributional problem. The flavors include inequality, risk, social...

Inequality measurement involves explicit or implicit value judgements. The subjective approach to inequality measurement is a relatively new and fast-developing area which focueses direct attention on these judgements. It is 'subjective' in the sense that it takes accounts of peoples' views on...

We examine the implications of three similar criteria that are commonly used in welfare economics and the analysis of inequality and poverty - income dominance, monotonicity and the Pareto principle - within the context of income-distribution comparisons. We show that whilst there is a simple...

It is known from the literature on uncertainty that in cases where individuals express a preference for a high win-probability bet over a bet with high winnings they nevertheless will bid more to obtain the bet with high winnings. We investigate whether a similar phenomenon applies in the...

Orderings of income distribution in terms of inequality should be closely related to orderings in terms of risk. Using a novel mult-country questgionnaire experiment we examine the basis for this claim in terms of respondents' distributional perceptions. We show that in terms of both inequality...

Inequality measurement involves explicit or implicit value judgements. The subjective approach to inequality measurement is a relatively new and fast-developing area which focueses direct attention on these judgements. It is 'subjective' in the sense that it takes accounts of peoples' views on...

We re-examine some of the standard axioms used in the literature on poverty measurement. Using a sample of 486 students from Australia, Israel and the USA we investigate the extent to which individuals' perceptions of poverty correspond to the axioms. We find that axioms such as anonymity,...