IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v387y2008i8p2047-2054.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inequality indicators and distinguishability in economics

Author

Listed:
  • Rosenblatt, J.
  • Martinás, K.

Abstract

Money has a material counterpart, such as banknotes or coins, and an ideal expression, monetary units. In the latter case, it is boson-like: individual incomes have no a priori limit, and their units are not distinguishable from each other in economic processes. Individuals, on the other hand, usually occupy one job at a time which makes them akin to fermions. We apply to individual incomes down-to-earth statistical calculations, similar to those for quantum particles, and obtain expressions for the cumulative distribution function, probability density and Lorenz function resulting from the simultaneous use of both statistics. They provide extremely good fits to corresponding data on French income distributions. On this basis, we propose a new entropic inequality indicator.

Suggested Citation

  • Rosenblatt, J. & Martinás, K., 2008. "Inequality indicators and distinguishability in economics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(8), pages 2047-2054.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:387:y:2008:i:8:p:2047-2054
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2007.11.030
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437107012228
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.physa.2007.11.030?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sarabia, José María & Jordá, Vanesa, 2014. "Explicit expressions of the Pietra index for the generalized function for the size distribution of income," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 416(C), pages 582-595.
    2. Salois, Matthew J., 2013. "Regional changes in the distribution of foreign aid: An entropy approach," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(13), pages 2893-2902.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:387:y:2008:i:8:p:2047-2054. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.