IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolec/v69y2010i11p2261-2270.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the relationship between scale, allocation, and distribution

Author

Listed:
  • Malghan, Deepak

Abstract

We develop a formal framework to investigate the relationship between ecological economics' concept of scale, and the more traditional concerns of allocation, and distribution. The framework presented here helps clarify differences between the normative and positive aspects of scale, allocation, and distribution. In particular, we distinguish between 'normative rules' and 'normative benchmarks'. This distinction helps untangle the web of hierarchical and evolutionary relationships that connect scale, allocation, and distribution. We also introduce concepts of scale efficiency and distribution efficiency as counterparts to the widely used allocation efficiency, and develop a simple dynamic model relating these three efficiencies. We then present stylized facts about the relationship between scale, allocation, and distribution that this model helps uncover.

Suggested Citation

  • Malghan, Deepak, 2010. "On the relationship between scale, allocation, and distribution," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 2261-2270, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:69:y:2010:i:11:p:2261-2270
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921-8009(10)00240-5
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daly, Herman E., 1992. "Allocation, distribution, and scale: towards an economics that is efficient, just, and sustainable," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 185-193, December.
    2. Gastwirth, Joseph L & Glauberman, Marcia, 1976. "The Interpolation of the Lorenz Curve and Gini Index from Grouped Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(3), pages 479-483, May.
    3. Howarth, Richard B & Norgaard, Richard B, 1992. "Environmental Valuation under Sustainable Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(2), pages 473-477, May.
    4. Daly, Herman E., 1994. "Reply," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 90-91, July.
    5. Kakwani, Nanak C, 1977. "Applications of Lorenz Curves in Economic Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(3), pages 719-727, April.
    6. Norgaard, Richard B., 2010. "Ecosystem services: From eye-opening metaphor to complexity blinder," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(6), pages 1219-1227, April.
    7. Philip Lawn, 2004. "A comment on the independence of allocation, distribution and scale," International Journal of Global Environmental Issues, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 4(4), pages 298-303.
    8. Dasgupta, Partha & Sen, Amartya & Starrett, David, 1973. "Notes on the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 180-187, April.
    9. Gastwirth, Joseph L, 1972. "The Estimation of the Lorenz Curve and Gini Index," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 54(3), pages 306-316, August.
    10. Jacobson, Arne & Milman, Anita D. & Kammen, Daniel M., 2005. "Letting the (energy) Gini out of the bottle: Lorenz curves of cumulative electricity consumption and Gini coefficients as metrics of energy distribution and equity," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(14), pages 1825-1832, September.
    11. Prakash, Aseem & Gupta, Anil K., 1994. "Are efficiency, equity, and scale independent?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 89-90, July.
    12. Sen, Amartya, 1973. "On Economic Inequality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198281931, Decembrie.
    13. Gibson, Clark C. & Ostrom, Elinor & Ahn, T. K., 2000. "The concept of scale and the human dimensions of global change: a survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 217-239, February.
    14. Lawn, Philip A. & Sanders, Richard D., 1999. "Has Australia surpassed its optimal macroeconomic scale? Finding out with the aid of 'benefit' and 'cost' accounts and a sustainable net benefit index," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 213-229, February.
    15. Herman E. Daly, 1991. "Towards an Environmental Macroeconomics," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 67(2), pages 255-259.
    16. Lawn, Philip A., 2001. "Scale, prices, and biophysical assessments," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 369-382, September.
    17. Jordan, Geraldine J. & Fortin, Marie-Josee, 2002. "Scale and topology in the ecological economics sustainability paradigm," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 361-366, May.
    18. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hu, Zhineng & Chen, Yazhen & Yao, Liming & Wei, Changting & Li, Chaozhi, 2016. "Optimal allocation of regional water resources: From a perspective of equity–efficiency tradeoff," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 102-113.
    2. Distefano, Tiziano & Chiarotti, Guido & Laio, Francesco & Ridolfi, Luca, 2019. "Spatial Distribution of the International Food Prices: Unexpected Heterogeneity and Randomness," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 122-132.
    3. John J. Kineman & Krupanidhi Srirama & Jennifer Wilby & Skyler Perkins, 2017. "Exploring Foundations and Value Boundaries in Social–Ecological Systems," Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(5), pages 637-642, September.
    4. Jonathan M. Harris, 2016. "Population, resources and energy in the global economy: a vindication of Herman Daly’s vision," Chapters, in: Joshua Farley & Deepak Malghan (ed.), Beyond Uneconomic Growth, chapter 4, pages 65-82, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Pirgmaier, Elke, 2017. "The Neoclassical Trojan Horse of Steady-State Economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 52-61.
    6. Tiziano Distefano & Guido Chiarotti & Francesco Laio & Luca Ridolfi, 2018. "Spatial distribution of the international food prices: unexpected randomness and heterogeneity," SEEDS Working Papers 0118, SEEDS, Sustainability Environmental Economics and Dynamics Studies, revised Jan 2018.
    7. Yuanhong Tian & Matthias Ruth & Dajian Zhu, 2017. "Using the IPAT identity and decoupling analysis to estimate water footprint variations for five major food crops in China from 1978 to 2010," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 19(6), pages 2355-2375, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chakravarty, Satya R. & Sarkar, Palash, 2022. "A synthesis of local and effective tax progressivity measurement," MPRA Paper 115180, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Carbonell-Nicolau, Oriol & Llavador, Humberto, 2018. "Inequality reducing properties of progressive income tax schedules: the case of endogenous income," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(1), January.
    3. repec:zbw:hohpro:331 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Vincenzo Prete & Alessandro Sommacal & Claudio Zoli, 2016. "Optimal Non-Welfarist Income Taxation for Inequality and Polarization Reduction," Working Papers 23/2016, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    5. Udo Ebert, 2011. "The redistribution of income when needs differ," Working Papers V-331-11, University of Oldenburg, Department of Economics, revised Feb 2011.
    6. Louis Kaplow, 2005. "Why measure inequality?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 3(1), pages 65-79, April.
    7. Satya R. Chakravarty & Palash Sarkar, 2022. "Inequality minimising subsidy and taxation," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 10(1), pages 53-67, May.
    8. José‐María Sarabia & Enrique Castillo & Daniel J. Slottje, 2001. "An Exponential Family of Lorenz Curves," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 67(3), pages 748-756, January.
    9. repec:old:wpaper:331 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Keshkamat, S.S. & Kooiman, A. & van Maarseveen, M.F.A.M. & der Veen, A. van & Zuidgeest, M.H.P., 2012. "A boundary object for scale selection — Moderating differences and synergising understanding," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 15-24.
    11. John P. Formby & W. James Smith & Paul D. Thistle, 1992. "On the Definition of Tax Neutrality: Distributional and Welfare Implications of Policy Alternatives," Public Finance Review, , vol. 20(1), pages 3-23, January.
    12. Satya R. Chakravarty & Pietro Muliere, 2003. "Welfare indicators: A review and new perspectives. 1. Measurement of inequality," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(3), pages 457-497.
    13. Nanak Kakwani & Marcelo Neri & Hyun H. Son, 2006. "Linkages between Pro-Poor Growth, Social Programmes and Labour Market: The Recent Brazilian Experience," Working Papers 26, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    14. Alain Chateauneuf & Patrick Moyes, 2002. "Measuring inequality without the Pigou-Dalton condition," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-00156475, HAL.
    15. Stiglitz, Joseph E., 2002. "New perspectives on public finance: recent achievements and future challenges," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 341-360, December.
    16. Oscar Bajo & Rafael Salas, 2002. "Inequality foundations of concentration measures: An application to the Hannah-Kay indices," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 4(4), pages 311-316.
    17. Kakwani, Nanak & Neri, Marcelo Côrtes & Son, Hyun H., 2010. "Linkages Between Pro-Poor Growth, Social Programs and Labor Market: The Recent Brazilian Experience," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 881-894, June.
    18. WANG, Zuxiang & SMYTH, Russell & NG, Yew-Kwang, 2009. "A new ordered family of Lorenz curves with an application to measuring income inequality and poverty in rural China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 218-235, June.
    19. John P. Formby & Steven G. Medema & W. James Smith, 1995. "Tax Neutrality and Social Welfare in a Comptutational General Equilibrium Framework," Public Finance Review, , vol. 23(4), pages 419-447, October.
    20. Michel Le Breton & Juan Moreno-Ternero & Alexei Savvateev & Shlomo Weber, 2013. "Stability and fairness in models with a multiple membership," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 42(3), pages 673-694, August.
    21. Morton, Alec, 2014. "Aversion to health inequalities in healthcare prioritisation: A multicriteria optimisation perspective," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 164-173.
    22. Walter Bossert & Bhaskar Dutta, 2019. "The measurement of welfare change," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 53(4), pages 603-619, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:69:y:2010:i:11:p:2261-2270. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.