We provide an analytical-behavioral explanation for the observed positive relationship between income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, and the incentive to migrate. We show that a higher total relative deprivation of a population leads to a stronger incentive to engage in...

This paper argues that an increase in the inequality of wealth prompts a stronger quest for status that in turn fosters the accumulation of wealth. It proposes a measure for an individual's want of social status. For a given level of a population's wealth, the corresponding aggregate measure of...

Leaky-bucket transactions can be regarded as a generalization of the transfer principle allowing for transaction costs. In its most rudimentary form, leaky-bucket transactions trace out the maximum leakage of transaction costs such that a transfer still pays at the margin. Yet - to pay at the...

Using an experiment with material incentives, this paper investigates the violation of Lorenz relations in the case of dominant and single-crossing Lorenz curves. Our experimental design consists of two treatments: an income distribution treatment and a lottery treatment. Both treatments were...

Leaky-bucket transactions can be regarded as income transfers allowing for transaction costs. In its most rudimentary form, leaky-bucket transactions trace out the maximum "leakage" of transaction costs before income inequality is exacerbated, or before a welfare loss is experienced. This notion...

Income-expenditure surveys typically provide incomes on the household level. As households can differ in size and needs, a reliable assessment of inequality in living standards, therefore, necessitates the conversion of the original heterogeneous into an artificial quasi-homogeneous population....

This paper provides a comparative experimental study of risky prospects (lotteries) and income distributions. The experimental design consisted of multi-outcome lotteries and n-dimensional income distributions arranged in the shapes of ten distributions which were judged in terms of ratings and...

This paper investigates distributive justice using a fourfold experimental design : The ignorance and the risk scenarios are combined with the self-concern and the umpire modes. We study behavioral switches between self-concern and umpire mode and investigate the goodness of ten standards of...

Using an experiment with material incentives, this paper investigates the violation of composite dominance relationships, viz. absolute Pareto dominance, Pareto rank dominance, transfer dominance, Lorenz dominance, and generalized Lorenz dominance. Moreover, we test tail independence. The...

This paper uses the data gained from an income categorization experiment for five shapes of income distributions to investigate background context effects, relative deprivation, range-frequency theory to explain background context effects, individual income satisfaction versus aggregate...