Comparing degrees of inequality aversion

Kristof Bosmans

Public Economics Working Paper Series from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Centrum voor Economische Studiën, Working Group Public Economics

Abstract: We propose a straightforward dominance procedure for comparing social welfare orderings (SWOs) with respect to the degree of inequality aversion they express. Three versions of the procedure are considered, each of which uses a different underlying criterion of inequality comparisons: (i) a concept based on the Lorenz quasi-ordering, which we argue to be the ideal version, (ii) a concept based on a minimalist criterion of inequality, and (iii) a concept based on the relative differentials quasi-ordering. It turns out that the traditional Arrow-Pratt approach is equivalent to the latter two concepts for important classes of SWOs, but that it is profoundly inconsistent with the Lorenz-based concept. With respect to the problem of combining extreme inequality aversion and monotonicity, concepts (ii) and (iii) identify as extremely inequality averse a class of SWOs that includes leximin as a special case, whereas the Lorenz-based concept (i) concludes that extreme inequality aversion and monotonicity are incompatible.

Keywords: Inequality aversion; Lorenz; Leximin; Maximin; Risk aversion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Forthcoming in Social Choice and Welfare.

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Comparing degrees of inequality aversion (2007)
Working Paper: Comparing degrees of inequality aversion (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpe:papers:ineqav

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Public Economics Working Paper Series from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Centrum voor Economische Studiën, Working Group Public Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kristof Bosmans ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).