Gini, deprivation and complaints

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 be shown that a concept similar to the concept of deprivation then emerges. In turn deprivation is related to the Gini index and to poverty. The paper examines the relationships between the Gini index and Lorenz orderings on the one hand and deprivation, poverty and complaints on the other hand

Theil, Inequality Indices and Decomposition

Theil’s approach to the measurement of inequality is set in the context of subsequent developments over recent decades. It is shown that Theil’s initial insight leads naturally to a very general class of decomposable inequality measures. It is thus closely related to a number of other commonly used families of inequality measures.Theil, inequality; independence; homotheticity; translatability

Theil, Inequality and the Structure of Income Distribution

This paper documents the impact of Argentina's recent economic crises on different aspects of poverty, with a special focus on the economic collapse of 2002. We discuss the methodology of poverty measurement in Argentina and we use a simple rule to compensate for the lack of regional poverty figures until 2001, providing consistent series of urban poverty estimates at the national and regional levels. We then present series of short term dynamics of poverty, decomposing the changes in every period of time with panel data. Finally, we analyse the determinants of poverty, with a focus on accounting for observed differences in income (and thereby poverty) between October 2001 and May 2002. Among other conclusions, we find in our decomposition analysis that households without the means to diversify their income sources suffered more than others from the crisis of 2002.Theil, inequality, independence, homotheticity, translatability.

Income Distribution and Inequality

What are the principal issues on which research on income distributionand inequality focus? How might that focus shift in the immediate future?Prepared for the The Elgar Handbook of Socio-Economics.

Inequality, welfare and monotonicity

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 equity-efficient trade-off. Particularly simple results are available for a large class of inequality measures that includes the Gini. These results do not require differentiability of the social-welfare function

Measurement of Inequality (published in Handbook of Income Distribution, A B Atkinson and F Bourguignon (eds), 1998)

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.Inequality, social welfare, income distribution

Inequality among the Wealthy

Using the evidence from the Luxembourg Wealth Study it appears that the distribution of wealth in the UK is considerably less than in Canada, the US or Sweden. But does this result come from an underestimate of inequality among the wealthy and of the wealth differential between the rich and the rest? Using a Pareto model for the upper tail of the distribution we can see that the inequality of comparisons of the UK with the other countries is indeed robust.wealth distribution

Sticks and Carrots

The tax-payer-as-gambler (TAG) model of tax non-compliance is the classic vehicle for providing some simple insights. Under fairly general conditions this model supports the following four propositions: (1) if the rate of return to evasion is positive everyone evades tax; (2) people with higher risk-aversion tend to evade less; (3) people with higher personal income tend to evade more; (4) increasing any of the standard tax-enforcement parameters (the probability of audit, the proportional surcharge on evaded tax and the tax rate) will reduce the amount of concealed income. Not all of these TAG model predictions seem intuitively reasonable, nor are they all borne out by empirical evidence.There are three principal intellectual routes for a more satisfactory approach:(a)A re-examination of the underlying model of taxpayer motivation. This encompasses relaxation of the expected-utility assumption, introduction of time into the modeling framework and an extension of the range of arguments of the utility function.(b)A revision of the model of interaction between the taxpayer and the tax authority. This allows the introduction of an explicit strategic interaction encapsulated in the auditing relationship. Neither the models with precommitment or those without precommitment fully capture the relevant features of the noncompliance problem. Both neglect the problem of "ghosts".(c)The role of the modeling of firms. This route is relatively neglected in the theoretical and empirical literature. An elementary treatment of the problem suggests that it has potential as an exploratory tool and as a guide to policy makers.Compliance, tax evasion, risk-taking, enforcement.

Inequality: Measurement

This article provides a brief overview of the key issues in inequality measurement andhas been prepared for inclusion in the second edition of The New Palgrave.inequality, social welfare, ranking.