We stablish a general relationship between the standard form of the individualistic social-welfare function and the "reduced-form" version that is expressed in terms of inequality and mean income. This shows the relationship between the property of monotonicity and the slope of the...

Inequality aversion and risk aversion are widely assumed features of economic models. But a review of the literature revealed that inequlity aversion and risk aversion are treated as separate variables. This paper presents exploratory research designed to separate inequality aversion from risk...

The analysis of inequality is placed in the context of recent developments in economics and statistics. Prepared for Handbook of Income Distribution, edited by A B Atkinson and F Bourguignon.

AA substantial literature examines second-best environmental policy, focusing particularly on how the Pigouvian directive that marginal taxes should equal marginal external harms needs to be modified in light of the preexisting distortion due to labor income taxation. Additional literature is...

This paper examines the impact of mass media and information and commu- nications technologies (ICT) as knowledge-based infrastructures on economic development. The results suggest that both mass media and ICT penetra- tion are negatively associated with corruption. This result holds across both...

Using a simple axiomatic structure we characterise two classes of inequality indices - absolute and relative - that take into account “envy” in the income distribution. The concept of envy incorporated here concerns the distance of each person’s income from his or her immediately richer...

Recent insights from the philosopher Larry Temkin have suggested a new basis for the measurement of income inequality, founded on the notion of individual “complaints” about income distribution. Under certain specifications of the relationship between complaints and personal incomes it can...

This paper investigates the relationship between growth and inequality from a demographic point of view. In an extended model of the accidental bequest with endogenous fertility, we analyze the effects of a decrease in the old-age mortality rate on the equilibrium growth rate as well as on the...

This article provides a brief overview of the key issues in inequality measurement and has been prepared for inclusion in the second edition of The New Palgrave.

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...