Eur. Phys. J. B (2012) 85: 261
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2012-30239-3

Regular Article

Exploiting the flexibility of a family of models for taxation and redistribution

Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Piazza Università 5, 39100 Bolzano, Italy

^a e-mail: MariaLetizia.Bertotti@unibz.it

Received: 16 March 2012
Received in final form: 21 May 2012
Published online: 30 July 2012

Abstract

We discuss a family of models expressed by nonlinear differential equation systems describing closed market societies in the presence of taxation and redistribution. We focus in particular on three example models obtained in correspondence to different parameter choices. We analyse the influence of the various choices on the long time shape of the income distribution. Several simulations suggest that behavioral heterogeneity among the individuals plays a definite role in the formation of fat tails of the asymptotic stationary distributions. This is in agreement with results found with different approaches and techniques. We also show that an excellent fit for the computational outputs of our models is provided by the κ-generalized distribution introduced by Kaniadakis in [Physica A 296, 405 (2001)].