Economic Theory of Income Inequality

Edited by Robert A. Becker, Professor of Economics, Indiana University, Bloomington, US

‘. . . Like Cowell's collection, this new volume is a treasure trove. It contains classics such as Lorenz's 1905 'Methods of Measuring the Concentration of Wealth' ( - strange how disconcerting it is to see the Lorenz curve, as originally drawn, on a graph with per cent of total wealth along the horizontal axis, and per cent of population along the vertical). It also contains more recent material, including Foster and Wolfson's 2010 article 'Polarization and the Decline of the Middle Class.’

• Contents:AcknowledgementsIntroduction Robert A. BeckerPART ITHE ECONOMICS OF INCOME INEQUALITY MEASUREMENT: AN OVERVIEW1. James E. Foster (1985), ‘Inequality Measurement’2. Joseph Persky (1992), ‘Retrospectives: Pareto’s Law’PART IITHE FOUNDATIONS OF INCOME INEQUALITY MEASUREMENTA. The Lorenz Curve 3. M.O. Lorenz (1905), ‘Methods of Measuring the Concentration of Wealth’4. Daniel B. Levine and Neil M. Singer (1970), ‘The Mathematical Relation Between the Income Density Function and the Measurement of Inequality’5. Joseph I. Gastwirth (1971), ‘A General Definition of the Lorenz Curve’6. N.C. Kakwani (1977), ‘Applications of Lorenz Curves in Economic Analysis’7. Rolf Aaberge (2009), ‘Ranking Intersecting Lorenz Curves’B. The Connection Between Income Inequality and Welfare Economics8. S. Ch. Kolm ([1969] 2001), ‘The Optimal Production of Social Justice’9. Anthony B. Atkinson (1970), ‘On the Measurement of Inequality’C. Mathematical Foundations of Inequality Theory: Majorization10. G.H. Hardy, J.E Littlewood and G. Polya (1929), ‘Some Simple Inequalities Satisfied by Convex Functions’11. Miodrag Tomic (2010), ‘Gauss’ Theorem Concerning the Centre of Gravity and its Application’PART IIIEXTENDING THE KOLM-ATKINSON APPROACH TO INEQUALITY MEASUREMENT 12. A.B. Atkinson (2008), ‘More on the Measurement of Inequality’13. Anthony F. Shorrocks and James E. Foster (1987), ‘Transfer Sensitive Inequality Measures’14. James Davies and Michael Hoy (1994), ‘The Normative Significance of Using Third-Degree Stochastic Dominance in Comparing Income Distributions’15. Dominique Thon and Stein W. Wallace (2004), ‘Dalton Transfers, Inequality and Altriusm’16. Ronny Aboudi, Dominique Thon and Stein W. Wallace (2010), ‘Inequality Comparisons when the Populations Differ in Size’PART IVTHE SOCIAL WELFARE VIEW OF INEQUALITYA. The Welfare Approach17. Amartya Sen (1974), ‘Informational Bases of Alternative Welfare Approaches’18. Camilo Dagum (1990), ‘On the Relationship Between Income Inequality Measures and Social Welfare Functions’19. Karl Mosler and Pietro Miliere (1996), ‘Inequality Indices and the Starshaped Principle of Transfers’B. Axiomatics and Inequality Measurement20. Robert Dorfman (1979), ‘A Formula for the Gini Coefficient’21. Dominique Thon (1982), ‘An Axiomatization of the Gini Coefficient’22. James E. Foster (1983), ‘An Axiomatic Characterization of the Theil Measure of Income Inequality’23. Satya R. Chakravarty (2007), ‘A Deprivation-based Axiomatic Characterization of the Absolute Bonferroni Index of Inequality’PART VDECOMPOSABLE MEASURES AND GENERALIZED INEQUALITY A. Decomposable Inequality Measures24. Francis Bourguignon (1999), ‘Decomposable Income Inequality Measures’25. A.F. Shorrocks (1980), ‘The Class of Additively Decomposable Inequality Measures’26. Anthony F. Shorrocks (1984), ‘Inequality Decomposition by Population Subgroups’27. Esfandiar Maasoumi (1978), ‘The Measurement and Decomposition of Multi-Dimensional Inequality’B. Generalized Gini Indices28. John A. Weymark (1981), ‘Generalized Gini Inequality Indices’29. Shlomo Yitzhaki (1983), ‘On an Extension of the Gini Inequality Index’C. Axiomatics and Generalized Inequality Measures30. Frank A. Cowell and Kiyoshi Kuga (1981), ‘Inequality Measurement: An Axiomatic Approach’31. Frank A. Cowell and Kiyoshi Kuga (1981), ‘Additivity and the Entropy Concept: An Axiomatic Approach to Inequality Measurement’D. Multi-Dimensional Inequality Measures32. A.B. Atkinson and F. Bourguignon (1982), ‘The Comparison of Multi-Dimensioned Distributions of Economic Status’33. Kay-Yuen Tsui (1995), ‘Multidimensional Generalizations of the Relative and Absolute Inequality Indices: The Atkinson-Kolm-Sen Approach’34. Gleb Koshevoy (1998), ‘The Lorenz Zonotope and Multivariate Majorizations’PART VIDIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ON ECONOMIC INEQUALITY35. Joan-Maria Esteban and Debraj Ray (1994), ‘On the Measurement of Polorization’36. James E. Foster and Michael C. Wolfson (2010), ‘Polarization and the Decline of the Middle Class: Canada and the U.S.’