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Axioms and Intuitions about Societal Inequality

Samuel Bowles & Wendy Carlin

Journal of Income Distribution2024https://doi.org/10.25071/1874-6322.40591article
AJG 1ABDC B
Weight
0.37

Abstract

We show that Corrado Gini’s “concentration ratio” is an informative measure of experienced inequality that (as he pointed out) varies from one (his “maximum concentration”) to zero (“minimum concentration”), a feature that does not hold (except in infinite populations) for the measure advocated in the contribution to this symposium by our colleague, Debraj Ray. Through a social network representation of inequality and a series of examples, we clarify the differing intuitions about the nature of inequality that alternative measures of inequality capture.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.25071/1874-6322.40591

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@article{samuel2024,
  title        = {{Axioms and Intuitions about Societal Inequality}},
  author       = {Samuel Bowles & Wendy Carlin},
  journal      = {Journal of Income Distribution},
  year         = {2024},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.25071/1874-6322.40591},
}

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Evidence weight

0.37

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.17 × 0.4 = 0.07
M · momentum0.53 × 0.15 = 0.08
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.