IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cte/werepe/3920.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The measurement of opportunity inequality: a cardinality-based approach

Author

Listed:
  • Ok, Efe A.
  • Kranich, Laurence

Abstract

We consider the problem of ranking distributions of opportunity sets on the basis of equality. First, conditional on agents' preferences over individual opportunity sets, we formulate the analogues ofthe notions ofthe Lorenz partial ordering, equalizing Dalton transfers, and inequality averse social welfare functionals -concepts which play a central role in the literature on income inequality. For the particular case in which agents rank opportunity sets on the basis of their cardinalities, we establish an analogue of the fundamental theorem of inequality measurement: one distribution Lorenz dominates another if and only if the former can be obtained from the latter by a finite sequence of equalizing transfers, and if and only if the former is ranked higher than the latter by all inequality averse social welfare functionals. In addition, we characterize the smallest monotonic and transitive extension of the cardinality-based Lorenz inequality ordering.

Suggested Citation

  • Ok, Efe A. & Kranich, Laurence, 1995. "The measurement of opportunity inequality: a cardinality-based approach," UC3M Working papers. Economics 3920, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    • Handle: RePEc:cte:werepe:3920
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://e-archivo.uc3m.es/bitstream/handle/10016/3920/we953724.pdf?sequence=1
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sen, Amartya, 1973. "On Economic Inequality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198281931, Decembrie.
    2. Fields, Gary S & Fei, John C H, 1978. "On Inequality Comparisons," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(2), pages 303-316, March.
    3. Prasanta K. PATTANAIK & Yongsheng XU, 1990. "On Ranking Opportunity Sets in Terms of Freedom of Choice," Discussion Papers (REL - Recherches Economiques de Louvain) 1990036, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    4. Nitzan, Shmuel I. & Pattanaik, Prasanta K., 1984. "Median-based extensions of an ordering over a set to the power set: An axiomatic characterization," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 252-261, December.
    5. Kannai, Yakar & Peleg, Bezalel, 1984. "A note on the extension of an order on a set to the power set," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 172-175, February.
    6. Sen, Amartya, 1991. "Welfare, preference and freedom," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1-2), pages 15-29, October.
    7. 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.
    8. Bossert, Walter, 1989. "On the extension of preferences over a set to the power set: An axiomatic characterization of a quasi-ordering," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 84-92, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Barbera, S. & Bossert, W. & Pattanaik, P.K., 2001. "Ranking Sets of Objects," Cahiers de recherche 2001-02, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    2. Walter Bossert, 1998. "Opportunity Sets and the Measurement of Information," Discussion Papers 98/6, University of Nottingham, School of Economics.
    3. Ok, Efe A., 1997. "On Opportunity Inequality Measurement," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 300-329, December.
    4. Bossert, Walter, 2000. "Opportunity sets and uncertain consequences1," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 475-496, May.
    5. Ballester, Miguel A. & de Miguel, Juan R. & Nieto, Jorge, 2004. "Set comparisons in a general domain: the Indirect Utility Criterion," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 139-150, September.
    6. Gekker, Ruvin & van Hees, Martin, 2006. "Freedom, opportunity and uncertainty: A logical approach," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 246-263, September.
    7. Bossert, Walter, 1997. "Uncertainty aversion in nonprobabilistic decision models," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 191-203, October.
    8. 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.
    9. Alain Chateauneuf & Patrick Moyes, 2002. "Measuring inequality without the Pigou-Dalton condition," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-00156475, HAL.
    10. Fatiha Bennia & Nicolas Gravel & Brice Magdalou & Patrick Moyes, 2022. "Is body weight better distributed among men than among women? A robust normative analysis for France, the UK, and the US," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(1), pages 69-103, January.
    11. Amartya K. Sen, 1997. "From Income Inequality to Economic Inequality," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(2), pages 384-401, October.
    12. Francesco Andreoli & Claudio Zoli, 2020. "From unidimensional to multidimensional inequality: a review," METRON, Springer;Sapienza Università di Roma, vol. 78(1), pages 5-42, April.
    13. Magdalou, Brice, 2021. "A model of social welfare improving transfers," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    14. Gravel, Nicolas & Moyes, Patrick, 2012. "Ethically robust comparisons of bidimensional distributions with an ordinal attribute," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(4), pages 1384-1426.
    15. Baharad, Eyal & Nitzan, Shmuel, 2003. "Essential alternatives and set-dependent preferences--an axiomatic approach," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 121-129, April.
    16. Salant, Stephen W. & Shaffer, Greg, 2002. "Using Lorenz curves to represent firm heterogeneity in Cournot games," MPRA Paper 21876, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Nicolas Gravel & Patrick Moyes, 2011. "Bidimensional Inequalities with an Ordinal Variable," Studies in Choice and Welfare, in: Marc Fleurbaey & Maurice Salles & John A. Weymark (ed.), Social Ethics and Normative Economics, pages 101-127, Springer.
    18. Nicolas Gravel & Brice Magdalou & Patrick Moyes, 2021. "Ranking distributions of an ordinal variable," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(1), pages 33-80, February.
    19. Ulle Endriss, 2013. "Sincerity and manipulation under approval voting," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 74(3), pages 335-355, March.
    20. Claudio Zoli, 2002. "Inverse stochastic dominance, inequality measurement and Gini indices," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 77(1), pages 119-161, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Opportunity Inequality;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:cte:werepe:3920. 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: Ana Poveda (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.eco.uc3m.es/ .

    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.