Published in
NHH Discussion Paper no. 31, 2007, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration
Abstract
How should income be distributed among individuals when the contribution of each individual is a result of both factors within individual control and factors beyond individual control? We show that there exists a generalized version of the proportionality principle that satisfies both the liberal ideal of neutrality and the egalitarian ideal of equalization, and we provide a new characterization of it that only relies on two conditions that we argue capture the basic features of a liberal egalitarian framework.