How unequal is the world today? Is global income inequality falling, as many economists claim, or is it rising, as one often hears? This paper reviews the arguments and evidence. A number of concerns about the underlying data are identified, with biases going in both directions. Conceptual...

We investigate a normative theory of incomplete preferences in the context of preliminary screening procedures. We introduce a theory of ranking in the presence of objectively incomparable marginal contributions (apples and oranges). Our theory recommends benchmarking, a method under which an...

In this paper, a new class of polarization measures is derived axiomatically. The concept of polarization is here identified with the decline of the middle class. In particular, we extend the definition of middle class towards a more realistic framework: the middle class is defined in terms of...

Standard models for the evaluation of population health, such as the so-called models of aggregate Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs), or aggregate Healthy Years Equiva- lent (HYEs), are usually criticized on equity grounds. We provide in this paper normative justi_cations for alternative...

In this paper we explore the implications of fundamental principles for the evaluation of population health. We formalize those principles as axioms for social preferences over dis- tributions of health for a given population. We single out several focal population health evaluation functions,...

We analyze the implications of several principles related to the concepts of equal, or prioritarian, entitlement to continued life. These principles, when modeled as axioms for the evaluation of health distributions, and combined with some basic structural axioms, provide several...

This paper presents an axiomatic characterization of difference-form group contests, that is, contests fought among groups and where their probability of victory depends on the difference of their effective efforts. This axiomatization rests on the property of Absolute Consistency, stating that...

One of the methods to estimate the poverty level inside a given population is based on how to define the poverty line values. Each person having his income under the poverty threshold will be considered to be poor. In the literature we distinguish at least three approaches: to evaluate the...

One of the methods to estimate the poverty level inside a given population is based on how to define the poverty line values. Each person having his income under the poverty threshold will be considered to be poor. In the literature we distinguish at least three approaches: to evaluate the...

We explore in this paper the axiomatic approach to the problem of sharing the revenue from bundled pricing. We formalize two models for this problem on the grounds of two different informational bases. In both models, we provide axiomatic rationale for natural rules to solve the problem. We,...