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Ignorance, lotteries, and measures of economic inequality

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  • Christopher Bennett
  • Ričardas Zitikis

Abstract

Towards further enhancing the conceptual unification of the literature on risk and inequality, we demonstrate that a number of existing inequality indices arise naturally from a Harsanyi-inspired model of choice under risk, whereby individuals act as expected (reference-dependent) utility maximizers in the face of an income quantile lottery. Among other things, our reformulation gives rise to a novel reinterpretation of these classical indices as measures of the desirability of redistribution in society. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Bennett & Ričardas Zitikis, 2015. "Ignorance, lotteries, and measures of economic inequality," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 13(2), pages 309-316, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jecinq:v:13:y:2015:i:2:p:309-316
    DOI: 10.1007/s10888-015-9302-6
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    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. Vytaras Brazauskas & Francesca Greselin & Ricardas Zitikis, 2023. "Measuring income inequality via percentile relativities," Papers 2308.03708, arXiv.org.
    3. Greselin, Francesca & Zitikis, Ricardas, 2015. "Measuring economic inequality and risk: a unifying approach based on personal gambles, societal preferences and references," MPRA Paper 65892, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Francesca Greselin & Ričardas Zitikis, 2018. "From the Classical Gini Index of Income Inequality to a New Zenga-Type Relative Measure of Risk: A Modeller’s Perspective," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-20, January.

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