Figure 2.3: Lorenz Curves for Spoils Distribution on Pirate and Naval Ships

Relationship Between the Lorenz Curve Area and the Gini Coefficient

Unequal Spoils Distribution on the Royal Navy's 'Favourite' and 'Active'

Lorenz Curve for Spoils Distribution on the Royal Rover

Evaluating Wealth Distribution in Maritime Crews

Consider two eighteenth-century maritime crews with different systems for distributing captured treasure. Crew A operates under a strict hierarchy where officers receive disproportionately large shares, leaving a small fraction for the common sailors. Crew B follows a set of articles ensuring a much more even distribution, where each member's share is clearly defined and the difference between the highest and lowest shares is relatively small. If you were to plot a graphical representation of each crew's wealth distribution, with the cumulative percentage of the crew on one axis and the cumulative percentage of treasure they receive on the other, what would you expect to observe?

Explaining Distributional Differences

Match each description of a system for distributing spoils among a ship's crew to the corresponding characteristic of its graphical representation of inequality, where the axes plot the cumulative percentage of the crew against the cumulative percentage of spoils they receive.

Comparative Fairness of Pirate vs. Naval Systems in the 18th Century