A general class of additively decomposable inequality measures |
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Authors: | James E Foster Artyom A Shneyerov |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA(e-mail: fosterje@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu) , US;(2) Department of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences, J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA (e-mail: a-shneyerov@nwu.edu) , US |
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Abstract: | Summary. This paper presents and characterizes a two-parameter class of inequality measures that contains the generalized entropy
measures, the variance of logarithms, the path independent measures of Foster and Shneyerov (1999) and several new classes
of measures. The key axiom is a generalized form of additive decomposability which defines the within-group and between-group
inequality terms using a generalized mean in place of the arithmetic mean. Our characterization result is proved without invoking
any regularity assumption (such as continuity) on the functional form of the inequality measure; instead, it relies on a minimal
form of the transfer principle – or consistency with the Lorenz criterion – over two-person distributions.
Received: October 27, 1997; revised: March 25, 1998 |
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Keywords: | and Phrases: Inequality measures Theil measures Variance of logarithms Generalized entropy measures Additive decomposability Functional equations Axiomatic characterization |
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