On revealed diversity

Working Paper 2012-254

Abstract

We introduce and characterize axiomatically a diversity criterion, capturing individual dissimilarity as ‘revealed’ by the different best-choices that members of a society select from a set of opportunities. Diversity ordering is induced by a class of frequency-based evaluation functions, the one element of which is the celebrated diversity measure, Shannon entropy.

Authors: Gaetano Gaballo, Ernesto Savaglio.