From the Classical Gini Index of Income Inequality to a New Zenga-Type Relative Measure of Risk: A Modeller’s Perspective

Greselin, Francesca; Zitikis, Ričardas

doi:10.3390/econometrics6010004

Open AccessArticle

From the Classical Gini Index of Income Inequality to a New Zenga-Type Relative Measure of Risk: A Modeller’s Perspective

by

Francesca Greselin

¹

and

Ričardas Zitikis

^2,*

¹

Dipartimento di Statistica e Metodi Quantitativi, Università di Milano–Bicocca, Milan 20126, Italy

²

School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, Western University, London, ON N6A 5B7, Canada

^*

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Econometrics 2018, 6(1), 4; https://doi.org/10.3390/econometrics6010004

Submission received: 28 August 2017 / Revised: 17 January 2018 / Accepted: 22 January 2018 / Published: 25 January 2018

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Econometrics and Income Inequality)

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Abstract

The underlying idea behind the construction of indices of economic inequality is based on measuring deviations of various portions of low incomes from certain references or benchmarks, which could be point measures like the population mean or median, or curves like the hypotenuse of the right triangle into which every Lorenz curve falls. In this paper, we argue that, by appropriately choosing population-based references (called societal references) and distributions of personal positions (called gambles, which are random), we can meaningfully unify classical and contemporary indices of economic inequality, and various measures of risk. To illustrate the herein proposed approach, we put forward and explore a risk measure that takes into account the relativity of large risks with respect to small ones.

Keywords: economic inequality; reference measure; personal gamble; inequality index; risk measure; relativity

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MDPI and ACS Style

Greselin, F.; Zitikis, R. From the Classical Gini Index of Income Inequality to a New Zenga-Type Relative Measure of Risk: A Modeller’s Perspective. Econometrics 2018, 6, 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/econometrics6010004

AMA Style

Greselin F, Zitikis R. From the Classical Gini Index of Income Inequality to a New Zenga-Type Relative Measure of Risk: A Modeller’s Perspective. Econometrics. 2018; 6(1):4. https://doi.org/10.3390/econometrics6010004

Chicago/Turabian Style

Greselin, Francesca, and Ričardas Zitikis. 2018. "From the Classical Gini Index of Income Inequality to a New Zenga-Type Relative Measure of Risk: A Modeller’s Perspective" Econometrics 6, no. 1: 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/econometrics6010004

APA Style

Greselin, F., & Zitikis, R. (2018). From the Classical Gini Index of Income Inequality to a New Zenga-Type Relative Measure of Risk: A Modeller’s Perspective. Econometrics, 6(1), 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/econometrics6010004

Note that from the first issue of 2016, this journal uses article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.

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From the Classical Gini Index of Income Inequality to a New Zenga-Type Relative Measure of Risk: A Modeller’s Perspective

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