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...

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...

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...

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...

We examine the relationship between risk analysis and inequality analysis, using a questionnaire-experimental approach .The experiments focus on the effect of income transformations on the perceived rankings of income distributions in either a risk or inequality context. Both context and income...

We establish 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...

We examine the way in which across-the-board additions to incomes are perceived to change inequality. Using a questionnaire we investigate whether subjective inequality rankings correspond to the principle of scale-independence of translation-independence, or to some generalised concept of...