Sensitivity of inequality measures to extreme values

Frank Cowell () and Emmanuel Flachaire

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We examine the sensitivity of estimates and inequality indices to extreme values, in the sense of their robustness properties and of their statistical performance. We establish that these measures are very sensitive to the properties of the income distribution. Estimation and inference can be dramatically affected, especially when the tail of the income distribution is heavy.

Keywords: inequality measures; statistical performance; robustness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C1 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2002-03
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/2213/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Sensitivity of Inequality Measures to Extreme Values (2002)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:2213

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