Reichtum in Niedersachsen und anderen Bundesländern - Ergebnisse aus der Einkommensteuer-Geschäftsstatistik 2003 für Selbständige (Freie Berufe und Unternehmer) und abhängige Beschäftigte
This contribution analyzes top incomes in the German Federal States for 2003 with focus on Lower-Saxony. Based on the microdata of the German Wage and Income Tax Current Statistics (Einkommensteuer-Geschaftsstatistik) for the first time richness rates and intensities of richness are examined for the self-employed as professions and entrepreneurs as well as for employees. We found large differences between the German Federal States and occupational groups. Even if the share of rich persons in the group of self-employed are substantially higher than in the group of employees the situation of the self-employed varies much between the German Federal States.
Multidimensional Polarization of Income and Wealth: The Extent and Intensity of Poverty and Affluence
Income and wealth are important determinants of individual economic well-being because they are a fundamental resource for consumption. Due to increasing inequality the distribution of income and wealth has moved more and more into the focus of scientific and political attention. The aim of this paper is to determine the extent and the intensity of multidimensional polarization of both income and wealth. Individual well-being is modeled by a well-being function directly affected by income and wealth. In order to have a flexible functional form for the well-being function the translog function is chosen. The parameters of the well-being function are not chosen arbitrarily but determined by the German population. From the perspective of an interdependent relation of the polarization dimensions income and wealth, the extent of multidimensional poverty and affluence is represented by the number of people who are assigned to be multidimensionally poor or affluent. The polarization intensity is measured by the multidimensional mean minimum polarization gap (2DGAP). This polarization intensity measure provides a transparent representation of each singular attribute and account for their possible interdependent relations. The data basis for the empirical investigation is the SAVE study from 2010 for Germany.
Strategy and Manipulation in Medieval Elections
There are many goals in developing electoral protocols, including a desire for a system which is transparent, in that it is clear what the rule or procedure to follow is; nonmanipulable, in that it is not in a person’s best interest to misrepresent their preferences; honest, in the sense that it elects the ‘right’ candidate; and not open to strategizing, i.e., bribery or collusion. However, these desiderata are in tension with each other: Often, transparent electoral procedures are the least strategy resistant, and many honest procedures encourage manipulation. Thus a balance between these different goals must be sought. In modern times, since the seminal result on vote manipulation, the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem [5, 6], much attention has been devoted to developing voting rules where manipulation is never in the best interest of the voters [4] or which are computationally too complex for the average bounded agent to be able to manipulate [1]. This focus on computational aspects of electoral methods is one of the hallmarks of modern studies on voting. But pursuit of these goals is not restricted to modern times: Those participating in elections in the Middle Ages also sought transparency, non-manipulability, honesty, and strategyproofness in so far as these properties can be consistently expressed in a single procedure. However, given the lack of computational sophistication in the Middle Ages, alternate approaches were needed in order to promote honesty, discourage strategizing, etc. These approaches can be classified as either external (constraints introduced outside of the electoral procedure, such as incentives for coming to consensus quickly) or internal (constraints introduced within the electoral procedure, such as voting rules which cannot be manipulated without adverse effects, or which are too difficult for the average bounded agent to manipulate). Surveying examples of both approaches in the context of medieval ecclesiastical and secular elections provides an interesting comparison to modern electoral procedures. Elections in the Middle Ages were used for the same reasons that they are today: To select suitable candidate(s) for a particular office, duty, or obligation. However, it is important to note that the term electio was used in the Middle Ages in a broader sense than our modern ‘election’. Its primary sense was ‘selection’ or ‘choice’, and only secondarily ‘election’ in the modern sense. Thus, many records which purportedly discuss elections are not discussing elections of the type which interests us. We can identify four categories of medieval electoral processes: (1) Election by an external authority having no direct interest in the election; (2) Indirect election, where electors name other electors who then select or elect the officials; (3) Election by lot; and (4) Election by ballot. Elections of the first and third types are generally computationally uninteresting; the first type corresponds to dictatorial voting rules, and the third type collapses to probability theory. In general, interesting voting methods are found only in the fourth type, election by ballot, though they can also occur in indirect election.