RT Journal Article T1 Majority voting and Gini-based social welfare: testing the hypothesis of symmetry A1 Rodríguez Hernández, Juan Gabriel A1 Salas del Mármol, Rafael AB Majority voting accords with the class of social evaluation functions consistent with the Gini coefficient when income distributions are symmetric under a rank-dependent transformation (Rodríguez and Salas, 2014). Under this assumption, median income and the equally distributed equivalent income are the same, and the Gini coefficient is an affine function of the median–mean ratio. Despite the importance of these findings, the empirical plausibility of the symmetry hypothesis has not been tested yet. In this article, we contrast the symmetry assumption with an empirical exercise based on the Survey on Income and Living Conditions data set for the European Union in the period 2005–2007. We find that the symmetric condition is generally fulfilled. PB Chapman & Hall SN 1350-4851 YR 2015 FD 2015 LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/34227 UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/34227 LA spa NO Ahmad, I. A. and Li, Q. (1997) Testing symmetry of an unknown density function by Kernel method, Journal of Nonparametric Statistics, 7, 279–93. doi:10.1080/10485259708832704Atkinson, A. B. (1970) On the measurement of inequality, Journal of Economic Theory, 2, 244–63. doi:10.1016/0022-0531(70)90039-6Bai, J. and Ng, S. (2005) Tests for skewness, kurtosis, and normality for time series data, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 23, 49–60. doi:10.1198/073500104000000271Bishop, J. A., Formby, J. P. and Smith, W. J. (1991) Incomplete information, income redistribution and risk averse median voter behavior, Public Choice, 68, 41–55. doi:10.1007/BF00173818Black, D. (1948) On the rationale of group decision-making, Journal of Political Economy, 56, 23–34. doi:10.1086/256633Kakwani, N. (1985) Measurement of welfare with applications to Australia, Journal of Development Economics, 18, 429–61. doi:10.1016/0304-3878(85)90066-5Kakwani, N. (1986) Analyzing Redistribution Policies: A Study Using Australian Data, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Kolm, S. (1969) The optimal production of social justice, in Public Economics: An Analysis of Public Production and Consumption and Their Relations to the Private Sectors, Margolis, J. and Guitton, H. (Eds), Macmillan, London, pp. 145–200.Lambert, P. (1985) Social welfare and the Gini coefficient revisited, Mathematical Social Sciences, 9, 19–26. doi:10.1016/0165-4896(85)90003-4Premaratne, G. and Bera, A. (2005) A test for symmetry with leptokurtic financial data, Journal of Financial Econometrics, 3, 169–87. doi:10.1093/jjfinec/nbi009Rodríguez, J. G. and Salas, R. (2014) The Gini coefficient: majority voting and social welfare, Journal of Economic Theory, 152, 214–23. doi:10.1016/j.jet.2014.04.012Romer, T. (1975) Individual welfare, majority voting and the properties of a linear income tax, Journal of Public Economics, 4, 163–85. doi:10.1016/0047-2727(75)90016-XSaito, H. and Goovaerts, P. (2000) Geostatistical interpolation of positively skewed and censored data in a dioxin-contaminated site, Environmental Science Technology, 34, 4228–35. doi:10.1021/es991450ySalas, R. and Rodríguez, J. G. (2013) Popular support for social evaluation functions, Social Choice and Welfare, 40, 985–1014. doi:10.1007/s00355-012-0669-z NO Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) DS Docta Complutense RD 1 may 2024