Econometrics 2016, 4(3), 30; https://doi.org/10.3390/econometrics4030030
Estimation of Gini Index within Pre-Specified Error Bound
1
Department of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, USA
2
School of Mathematical Sciences, National Institute of Science Education and Research, Jatni 752050, Odisha, India
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Kerry Patterson
Received: 19 December 2015 / Revised: 25 April 2016 / Accepted: 3 June 2016 / Published: 24 June 2016
Abstract
Gini index is a widely used measure of economic inequality. This article develops a theory and methodology for constructing a confidence interval for Gini index with a specified confidence coefficient and a specified width without assuming any specific distribution of the data. Fixed sample size methods cannot simultaneously achieve both specified confidence coefficient and fixed width. We develop a purely sequential procedure for interval estimation of Gini index with a specified confidence coefficient and a specified margin of error. Optimality properties of the proposed method, namely first order asymptotic efficiency and asymptotic consistency properties are proved under mild moment assumptions of the distribution of the data. View Full-TextKeywords:
distribution-free method; fixed width confidence interval; Gini index; sample size planning; U-statistics
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).
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Chattopadhyay, B.; De, S.K. Estimation of Gini Index within Pre-Specified Error Bound. Econometrics 2016, 4, 30.
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