Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in the Preface to his famous Discourse on Inequality that “I consider the subject of the following discourse as one of the most interesting questions philosophy can propose, and unhappily for us, one of the most thorny that philosophers can have to solve. For how shall we know the source of inequality between men, if we do not begin by knowing mankind?” (Rousseau, 1754). This citation of Rousseau appears in an article in Spanish where Dagum (2001), in the memory of whom this book is published, also cites Socrates who said that the only useful knowledge is that which makes us better and Seneca who wrote that knowing what a straight line is, is not important if we do not know what rectitude is. These references are indeed a good illustration of Dagum’s vast knowledge, which was clearly not limited to the ?eld of Economics. For Camilo the ?rst part of Rousseau’s citation certainly justi?ed his interest in the ?eld of inequality which was at the centre of his scienti?c preoccupations. It should however be stressed that for Camilo the second part of the citation represented a “solid argument in favor of giving macroeconomic foundations to microeconomic behavior” (Dagum, 2001). More precisely, “individualism and methodological holism complete each other in contributing to the explanation of individual and social behavior” (Dagum, 2001).

Contains 15 papers, which were presented at the Fourth Meeting of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, Catania, Sicily, July 2011. This title includes measuring segregation, welfare and liberty, the use of influence functions in distributional analysis, and the axiomatic approach to multidimensional inequality.

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Palgrave Handbooks of Econometrics comprises 'landmark' essays by the world's leading scholars and provides authoritative guidance in key areas of econometrics. With definitive contributions on the subject, the Handbook is an essential source for reference for professional econometricians, economists, researchers and students. Following the successful Palgrave Handbook of Econometrics: Volume 1, this second volume brings together leading academics working in econometrics today and explores applied econometrics. Volume 2 contains contributions on subjects including growth/development econometrics, computing, microeconomics, macroeconomics, finance, spatial and urban economics and international economics.