Mathematical Analysis of Distribution and Redistribution of Income

Johan Fellman  © by the authors

ISBN: 978-1-940366-25-8
Published Date: February, 2015
Pages: 166
Paperback: $90
Publisher: Science Publishing Group
To purchase hard copies of this book, please email: book@sciencepublishinggroup.com
Book Description

Different skew models such as the lognormal and the Pareto have been proposed as suitable descriptions of the income distribution, but such specific distributions are usually applied in empirical investigations. For general studies more wide-ranging tools have been considered. The central and most commonly applied theory is connected to the Lorenz curve. Without any assumptions concerning specific distributions, this theory enables analyses of temporal and regional variations in the income inequalities. Particularly, it is a valuable tool for studies of the effect of taxes and transfers to the redistribution of income. Taxation and transferring may have similar effects, but some marked differences with respect to their applications can be identified and therefore, both will usually be given individual presentations.

In this study the author has collected the central parts of his contributions to the theory of income distributions and furthermore, the author has tried to locate his results within the framework of the general literature.

Author Introduction

Johan Fellman, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland.

Table of Contents
  • The Whole Book

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  • Front Matter

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  • Chapter 1 Introduction

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    1. 1.1 Historical Background
    2. 1.2 Income Distributions
    3. 1.3 Lorenz Curves and Concentration of Incomes
    4. 1.4 Modelling Lorenz Curves
  • Chapter 2 Income Transformations

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    1. 2.1 Income Redistributions
    2. 2.2 Additional Properties of Lorenz Curves for Transformed Income Distributions
    3. 2.3 Regional and Temporal Variation in the Income Inequality
    4. 2.4 Estimation of Gini Coefficients
  • Chapter 3 Taxation

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    1. 3.1 A Class of Tax Policies
    2. 3.2 Attainable Lorenz Curves
    3. 3.3 Classes of Non-differentiable Tax Policies
    4. 3.4 Discussion
  • Chapter 4 Transferring

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    1. 4.1 The Class of Transfer Policies
    2. 4.2 Attainable Lorenz Curves
    3. 4.3 Discontinuous Transfer Policies with a Given Lorenz Curve
    4. 4.4 Discussion
  • Chapter 5 Optimal Redistributive Tax Transfer Policy

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    1. 5.1 Optimal Tax Policy
    2. 5.2 Optimal Transfer Policy
    3. 5.3 The Optimal Redistributive Tax-transfer Policy
    4. 5.4 Empirical Illustration: Finland 1971-1990
    5. 5.5 Concluding Remarks
  • Back Matter

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