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 "flavours" or interpretations of the basic distributional problem. The flavours include inequality, risk, social welfare...

Using a newly available comprehensive micro-data set we examine changes in the shape of the Brazilian income distribution during the "lost decade" of the 1980s. We adopt alternative parametric and non-parametric approaches to modelling the distribution. We show that inequality changed...

We show how a collection of results in the literature on the empirical estimation of welfare indicators from sample data can be unified. We also demonstrate how some of these ideas can be extended to empirically important cases where the data have been trimmed or censored.

This paper examines how people assess inequality of an income distribution and how inequality could be measured. We start from philosophical analysis of L Temkin who distinguishes nine plausible aspects of inequality. His approach is based on the concept of 'complaints' or distances between...

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

We focus on a relatively neglected area of the tax-compliance literature ineconomics, the behaviour of firms. We examine the impact of alternativeaudit rules on receipts from a tax on profits in the context of strategicinter-dependence of firms. In the market firms may compete in terms ofeither...

This paper presents a robust estimation of two income distribution models using Spanish data for the period 1990-91 under three different concepts of income. The effect on the estimates of the Theil index due to the choice of the definition of income and of the estimation method is also analysed.

Using the GSOEP the paper analyses income mobility and inequality dynamics in Germany in the 90s at various levels of aggregation, ranging from a direct modelling of intra-distributional mobility using bivariate kernel density estimates to an examination of the moving cross-section.

We introduce a model of redistributive income taxation and publicexpenditure. Besides redistributing personal income by means of taxesand transfers, the government supplies goods and services. Thegovernment chooses the tax schedule that is found acceptable by thelargest share possible of the...