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Dalton transfers, inequality and altruism

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  • Dominique Thon
  • Stein W. Wallace

Abstract

This paper characterizes the set of income allocations attainable through a sequence of equalizing decentralized pair-wise transfers that each preserve the original ranking of the donor and the recipient. This kind of transfer has been considered in the literature on income distribution following Dalton’s famous 1920 article, and the concept is often attributed to him. We provide a description of the set of allocations attainable through a sequence of such transfers. This paper argues that, although those transfers are often mentioned in the literature on income inequality, they do not really play any role there. It also argues that such a transfer concept is, on the other hand, of great interest in modeling altruism and its consequences. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2004

Suggested Citation

  • Dominique Thon & Stein W. Wallace, 2004. "Dalton transfers, inequality and altruism," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 22(3), pages 447-465, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:sochwe:v:22:y:2004:i:3:p:447-465
    DOI: 10.1007/s00355-003-0226-x
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    Cited by:

    1. Ronny Aboudi & Dominique Thon, 2010. "Characterizations of egalitarian binary relations as transitive closures with a special reference to Lorenz dominance and to single-crossing conditions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 35(4), pages 575-593, October.
    2. Hay, M.J. & Schiff, J. & Fisch, N.J., 2017. "On extreme points of the diffusion polytope," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 473(C), pages 225-236.
    3. Ronny Aboudi & Dominique Thon & Stein Wallace, 2010. "Inequality comparisons when the populations differ in size," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(1), pages 47-70, March.
    4. Aboudi, Ronny & Thon, Dominique, 2006. "Refinements of Muirhead's Lemma and income inequality," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 201-216, March.

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