Resumen de Shapley inequality descomposition by factor components

Alain Trannoy, Mercedes Sastre

• The purpose of the paper is to focus on three methodological issues regarding ''the Shapley inequality decomposition'' by factor components that cannot be solved from a theoretical point of view. First, should we use either zero income decomposition, or equalized income decomposition? Second, should we favor the Nested-Shapley or the Owen decomposition? Third, can we structure the set of income components in some bliss tree? The empirical evidence displayed by results of several variants of the Shapley decomposition using the LIS database regarding the British and American income distributions help us to propose an answer to these questions: confine the analysis on gross income decomposition and select the equalized Nested Shapley method. In the absence of an ideal tree we propose three trees among which a choice has to be made.