Economics and Finance

2301 Submissions

[2] viXra:2301.0048 [pdf] replaced on 2023-01-12 10:12:53

Measuring Wealth and Remuneration Gaps

Authors: Ricardo Alvira
Comments: 24 Pages. License CC-BY-NC-ND

The paradigm that our societies should provide equal access to opportunities and a sufficient level of well-being to citizens regardless of their personal characteristics (gender, race, religion...) is one of the pillars, perhaps an axiom, of our political systems. And the link detected between the possession of income and wealth and access to opportunities means that the measurement of economic inequality (or gap) between different social groups is an indirect indicator to evaluate the degree of compliance with the previous axiom; that is, the degree to which said groups have equal access to opportunities and well-being.The mathematical characterization of the gap between groups is therefore key in this assessment. However, most proposals to assess economic gaps between groups use mathematical characterizations of the income or wealth of each group to be compared, whose inadequacy has already been demonstrated. Thus, to make progress on this issue, this text presents an alternative characterization of the income or wealth of the groups, based on the economic concept of equivalent average income, which states a relationship between average income, economic inequality, and generated welfare. This allows us to contrast the optimality of the different possible characterizations against the current axiomatic for inequality indexes. Likewise, the conceptualization itself implies the formulation of an inequality index which, compared to the most commonly used indexes (Gini, Pietra, Atkinson, Theil), provides the advantage of being able to compute zero or negative income or wealth values.
Category: Economics and Finance

[1] viXra:2301.0046 [pdf] submitted on 2023-01-07 19:12:04

On the Theory of Oligopoly

Authors: Ate Nieuwenhuis
Comments: 44 Pages. 1 black-and-white figure

It is argued, in the context of a heterogeneous oligopoly with perfect information, that rational behaviour should lead to an equilibrium that is invariant to the choice of instrument, price or quantity, by firms. The Cournot oligopoly and the Bertrand oligopoly fail this test; as both solutions are considered an example of a Nash noncooperative equilibrium, this result casts doubt on the appropriateness of the latter concept. The conjectural variations oligopoly passes the test. A natural consistency condition on the conjectural variations implies that the solution is in fact the contract (hyper)surface. The non-uniqueness of the equilibrium can be resolved by introducing a concept of economic force exerted by agents analogous to the force of gravity exerted by massive objects. This leads to the conclusion that the joint profit maximizing point is the equilibrium, where the joint profit includes the profits of the consumers. The equilibrium depends on cardinal properties of the consumers’ utility functions. The emphasis is on the exposition of ideas rather than on technical detail.Keywords: Conjectural variation, Contract curve, Force, Game, Nash noncooperative equilibrium, OligopolyJEL: C70, D21, D43, L13
Category: Economics and Finance