Title: Income distribution and majority patterns

Authors: Thomas Kämpke

Addresses: Forschungsinstitut für Anwendungsorientierte Wissensverarbeitung/n FAW/n, Lise-Meitner-Str. 9, Ulm 89081, Germany

Abstract: Majority coalitions are formed such that they can redistribute incomes to their favour. When inequality is to be increased in the interest of some, coalition partners must be found by compensation schemes. Compensation minimisation is shown to lead to the coalition partners being either a connected or a disconnected income group. When inequality reaches certain levels, disconnection becomes unavoidable. The transition from connected to disconnected coalitions is analysed in terms of bifurcations for various parametric types of income laws.

Keywords: coalition forming; Lorenz curve; bifurcation; least-cost majority; income redistribution; computational economics; income distribution; majority patterns; majority coalitions; disconnection; disconnected coalitions.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCEE.2012.053313

International Journal of Computational Economics and Econometrics, 2012 Vol.2 No.3/4, pp.155 - 178

Published online: 17 Apr 2013 *

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