Book Review of The Gini Methodology: A Primer on a Statistical Methodology

摘要

In this book, Shlomo Yitzhaki and Edna Schechtman investigate the "Gini methodology". Both of the authors have dedicated an important part of their life to the development and the understanding of the Gini coefficient and its applications in Statistics, Econometrics, and Economics (welfare and inequality measurement). More generally, the authors have developed (sometimes with other co-authors) a family of parameters based on Gini's mean difference: the Gini covariance (the co-Gini, which is the expression of GMD with the use of the covariance), the Gini correlation (G-correlation), the Extended Gini coefficient (EG), and the Gini parameters of a regression, among others. Those theoretical concepts, including inference purposes as well as the absolute Lorenz curves (i.e. the generalized Lorenz curve) are presented in the first part of the book (Chapters 2-11). The second part (Chapters 12-22) is devoted to the applications.