A comprehensive account of economic size distributions around the
world and throughout the years
In the course of the past 100 years, economists and applied
statisticians have developed a remarkably diverse variety of income
distribution models, yet no single resource convincingly accounts
for all of these models, analyzing their strengths and weaknesses,
similarities and differences. Statistical Size Distributions in
Economics and Actuarial Sciences is the first collection to
systematically investigate a wide variety of parametric models that
deal with income, wealth, and related notions.
Christian Kleiber and Samuel Kotz survey, compliment, compare,
and unify all of the disparate models of income distribution,
highlighting at times a lack of coordination between them that can
result in unnecessary duplication. Considering models from eight
languages and all continents, the authors discuss the social and
economic implications of each as well as distributions of size of
loss in actuarial applications. Specific models covered
include:
* Pareto distributions
* Lognormal distributions
* Gamma-type size distributions
* Beta-type size distributions
* Miscellaneous size distributions
Three appendices provide brief biographies of some of the
leading players along with the basic properties of each of the
distributions. Actuaries, economists, market researchers, social
scientists, and physicists interested in econophysics will find
Statistical Size Distributions in Economics and Actuarial Sciences
to be a truly one-of-a-kind addition to the professional
literature.
