IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/inq/inqwps/ecineq2014-322.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cost of Inequality, the Uniform Rule and Cooperative Games

Author

Listed:
  • Arsen Palestini

    (MEMOTEF, Sapienza University of Rome, Via del Castro Laurenziano 9, 00161 Rome, Italy.)

  • Giuseppe Pignataro

    (Department of Economics, University of Bologna, Strada Maggiore 45, 40125 Bologna, Italy.)

Abstract

The assessment of income inequality can be investigated looking at the solution concepts of the cooperative game theory. We propose a multi-factorial decomposition of the Atkinson index by income sources and evaluate it as a cooperative game of the social cost of inequality. This framework extends the distributive and efficient properties of the uniform rule (Sprumont [35]) in a setup with heterogeneous income sources and single-peaked preferences. We provide an axiomatic foundation of this preference-based allocation rule, called weakly uniform rule, with a further comparison with the solution concept of nucleolus. Sufficient conditions for their coincidence are therefore defined. Finally we characterize a welfare loss game expressed as the difference between the sum of inequalities generated by each source and the cost of the entire distribution. We show that income factors' contributions may increase or decrease the income inequality in the society ensuring different perspectives in terms of public policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Arsen Palestini & Giuseppe Pignataro, 2014. "Cost of Inequality, the Uniform Rule and Cooperative Games," Working Papers 322, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    • Handle: RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2014-322
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2014-322.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Palestini, Arsen & Pignataro, Giuseppe, 2016. "A graph-based approach to inequality assessment," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 455(C), pages 65-78.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Atkinson index; cost game; uniform rule; income sources; single-peaked preferences.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C71 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Cooperative Games
    • D33 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Factor Income Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:inq:inqwps:ecineq2014-322. 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: Maria Ana Lugo (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecineea.html .

    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.