Ranking Distributions of an Ordinal Attribute

Nicolas Gravel (), Brice Magdalou and Patrick Moyes ()

No 1450, AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France

Abstract: This paper establishes an equivalence between three incomplete rankings of distributions of an ordinally measurable attribute. The first ranking is that associated with the possibility of going from distribution to the other by a finite sequence of two elementary operations: increments of the attribute and the so-called Hammond transfer. The later transfer is like the Pigou-Dalton transfer, but without the requirement - that would be senseless in an ordinal setting - that the "amount" transferred from the "rich" to the "poor" is fixed. The second ranking is an easy-to-use statistical criterion associated to a specifically weighted recursion on the cumulative density of the distribution function. The third ranking is that resulting from the comparison of numerical values assigned to distributions by a large class of additively separable social evaluation functions. Illustrations of the criteria are also provided.

Keywords: ordinal; qualitative; Health; Inequality; Hammond transfers; increments; Dominance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C81 D63 I1 I3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2014-11-14
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Ranking Distributions of an Ordinal Attribute (2015)
Working Paper: Ranking distributions of an ordinal attribute (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1450

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