Ignorance, lotteries, and measures of economic inequality

Christopher Bennett () and Ričardas Zitikis ()

The Journal of Economic Inequality, 2015, vol. 13, issue 2, 309-316

Abstract: Towards further enhancing the conceptual unification of the literature on risk and inequality, we demonstrate that a number of existing inequality indices arise naturally from a Harsanyi-inspired model of choice under risk, whereby individuals act as expected (reference-dependent) utility maximizers in the face of an income quantile lottery. Among other things, our reformulation gives rise to a novel reinterpretation of these classical indices as measures of the desirability of redistribution in society. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Redistribution; Inequality; Lotteries; Veil of ignorance; Tilted lotteries; Lorenz curve; Atkinson index; Donaldson-Weymark index; Gini index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jecinq:v:13:y:2015:i:2:p:309-316

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DOI: 10.1007/s10888-015-9302-6

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