Measuring Inequality Without the Pigou-Dalton Condition

income differentials, deprivation, satifaction, Lorenz dominance, progressive transfers, expected utility, generalized Gini social

The Difficulty of Income Redistribution with Labour Supply

Two common principles in distributional analysis are that (i) a progressive transfer moves the Lorenz curve upwards, and (ii) progressive [neutral] taxation reduces [leaves unchanged] inequality. In order to establish these results it is currently assumed that the distribution of income is exogenously given. The relevance of these results is therefore limited in practice where incomes are determined by the working decisions of the agents in the economy. Considering a simple economy with two goods and two agents we indicate sufficient conditions for inequality in net income to decrease as a result of rich to poor transfers or progressive taxation. By means of simple examples we show that, when one incorporates labour supply responses, the fulfillment of these conditions is highly hypothetical and that everything can happen.Endogenous labour supply

Anaesthetic breathing circuit obstruction due to blockage of tracheal tube connector by a foreign body - two cases

Publisher's copy made available with the permission of the publisher© 1999 Australian Society of AnaesthetistsTwo cases are presented which illustrate the disastrous consequences possible when an anaesthetic breathing circuit is obstructed by a foreign body. Despite reports of previous similar cases, work practices and equipment manufacture or design continue to allow for such events to occur. The importance of both pre-anaesthetic testing of the entire circuit including attachments such as the tracheal tube connector and filters, and the removal of these parts should obstruction occur, is emphasised. Use of “clear” transparent breathing circuit components and opaque or brightly coloured packaging and caps which could potentially cause obstruction should decrease the incidence and facilitate the diagnosis of this problem.M.J. Foreman, D. G. Moye

Elitism and Stochastic Dominance

Stochastic dominance has typically been used with a special emphasis on risk and inequality reduction something captured by the concavity of the utility function in the expected utility model. We claim that the applicability of the stochastic dominance approach goes far beyond risk and inequality measurement provided suitable adpations be made. We apply in the paper the stochastic dominance approach to the measurment of elitism which may be considered the opposite of egalitarianism. While the usual stochastic dominance quasi-orderings attach more value to more equal and more efficient distributions, our criteria ensure that the more unequal and the more the efficient the distribution, the higher it is ranked. two instances are provided by (i) comparisons of scientific performance across institutions like universities or departments and (ii) comparisons of affluence as opposed to poverty across countries.Decumulative distribution functions; Stochastic dominance; Regressive transfers; Elitism; Scientific Performance; Affluence

Utilitarianism or Welfarism: Does it Make a Difference?

We show that it is possible to reconcile the utilitarian and welfarist principles under the requirement of unanimity provided that the set of profiles over which the consensus is attained is rich enough. More precisely, we identify a closedness condition which, if satisfied by a class of n-tuples of utility functions, guarantees that the rankings of social states induced by utilitarian and welfarist unanimities over that class are identical. We illustrate the importance of the result for the measurement of unidimensional as well as multidimensional inequalities from a dominance point of view.Unanimity; Utilitarianism; Welfarism; Stochastic Dominance; Inequality

Organic farming and gene transfer from genetically modified crops

This is the final report of MAFF/Defra project OF0157. Genetically modified (GM) crops cannot be released into the environment and used as food, feed, medicines or industrial processing before they have passed through a rigorous and internationally recognised regulatory process designed to protect human and animal health, and the environment. The UK body that oversees standards in organic farming, the United Kingdom Register of Organic Food Standards (UKROFS), has ruled that genetically modified (GM) crops have no role to play in organic farming systems. They, therefore, have concerns about the possibility and consequences of the mixing of GM crops with organic crops. The two main sources of mixing are through pollen and seed. Pollen from GM crops may pollinate an organic crop. Seed from a GM crop, or plants established from them, may become mixed with organic crops or their products. Minimising genetic mixing is an important feature of the production of all high quality seed samples of plant varieties supplied to farmers. Extensive experience has been obtained over many decades in the production of high purity seed samples. Crop isolation distances, and crop rotational and management practices are laid down to achieve this. These procedures for the production of seed of high genetic purity could be used for the production of organic crops. No system for the field production of seed can guarantee absolute genetic purity of seed samples. Very rarely long distance pollination or seed transfer is possible, so any criteria for organic crop production will need to recognise this. There has always been the possibility of hybridisation and seed mixing between organic crops and non-organic crops. Organic farming systems acknowledge the possibility of spray or fertiliser drift from non-organic farming systems, and procedures are established to minimise this. In practice, detecting the presence of certain types of GM material in organic crops, especially quantification, is likely to be difficult. Some seed used by organic farmers are currently obtained from abroad. After January 2001, or a modified deadline thereafter, UK organic farmers will be required to sow seed produced organically. There is little or no organic seed produced in the UK at present, so it has to be obtained from abroad. Seed obtained from outside the UK or the European Union, may have different seed production criteria. This may make it difficult to guarantee that it is absolutely free from any GM material. Organic farmers and/or GM crop producers will need to ensure that their crops are isolated from one another by an appropriate distance or barrier to reduce pollen transfer if the crop flowers. To reduce seed mixing, shared equipment will need to be cleaned and an appropriate period of time allowed before organic crops are grown on land previously used for GM crops. Responsibility for isolation will need to be decided before appropriate measures can be implemented. The report highlights the need for acceptable levels of the presence of GM material in organic crops and measures identified to achieve this

Rearrangements and Sequential Rank Order Dominance. A Result with Economic Applications

Distributive analysis typically involves comparisons of heterogeneous distributions where\r\nindividuals differ in more than just one attribute. In the particular case where there are two\r\nattributes and where the distribution of one of these two attributes is fixed, one can appeal\r\nto sequential rank order dominance for comparing distributions. We consider the degenerate\r\ncase where all individuals differ with respect to the attribute whose distribution is fixed and we show that sequential rank order domination of one distribution over another implies that the dominating distribution can be obtained from the dominated one by means of a finite sequence of favourable permutations, and conversely. We provide three examples where favourable permutations prove to have interesting implications from a normative point of view.Rearrangements, Favourable Permutations, Sequential Rank Order Dominance, Matching, Mobility, Impatience

Comparisons of Heterogeneous Distributions and Dominance Criteria

We are interested in the comparisons of standard-of-living across societies when observations of both income and household structure are available. We generalise the approach of Atkinson and Bourguignon (1987) to the case where the marginal distributions of needs can vary across the household populations under comparison. We assume that a sympathetic observer uses a utilitarian social welfare function in order to rank heterogeneous income distributions. Insofar as any individual can play the role of the observer, we take the unanimity point of view according to which the planner’s judgements have to comply with a certain number of basic normative principles. We impose increasingly restrictive conditions on the household’s utility function and we investigate their effects on the resulting rankings of the distributions. This leads us to propose four dominance criteria that can be used for providing an unambiguous ranking of income distributions for heterogeneous populations.Normative Analysis, Utilitarianism, Welfarism, Multidimensional Inequality and Welfare, Bidimensional Stochastic Dominance, Inequality Reducing Transformations.

Juste(s) titre(s) : l’économie liminaire du Roman bourgeois

Le roman bourgeois est en général considéré comme une oeuvre plus ou moins bâclée, un burlesque de deuxième ordre, racheté seulement, çà et là, par les quelques touches de description « réaliste » qu’il recèle. Nous croyons toutefois que lire ce roman selon une grille de lecture héritée du xixe siècle serait passer à côté du véritable intérêt du livre. Au lieu de considérer l’apparent désordre du récit — les historiettes détachées, les bribes de listes, la structure boîteuse, l’absence de personnage principal, la méchanceté grincheuse envers Charles Sorel, la terminaison arbitraire —, comme une tare qu’il faut condamner (ou excuser), cet article veut suggérer qu’il s’agit d’une décision stratégique de la part de Furetière dans une tentative globale de représenter une nouvelle commensurabilité esthétique qui serait propre à la bourgeoisie. C’est par le livre, objet à la fois commercial et esthétique, par un jeu polysémique autour du titre et enfin par une réflexion sur l’échange même que Furetière arrive à négocier quelques-unes des incommensurablités qui traversent la société du xviie siècle.Le roman bourgeois is usually seen as a more or less failed work, a second-order burlesque, redeemed only by the touches of incipient realism which shine through its disarticulated narrative. But to read this work through an interpretive framework provided by the nineteenth-century novel would be to miss much of its real value. Instead of considering its apparent lack of structure as a fault to be condemned or excused, this article takes these vices as virtues, reading the novel less as an attempt by Furetière to represent the “reality” of the bourgeoisie than to question the epistemological and social bases of its own representation. It is through the book, taken both as a commercial good and an aesthetic object, the title, understood principally as a polysemic signifier, and finally through a reflection on the exchange itself that Furetière is able to negotiate a number of incommensurabilites characteristic of French seventeenth-century society