| Article ID: | iaor19971731 |
| Country: | Netherlands |
| Volume: | 68 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Start Page Number: | 161 |
| End Page Number: | 180 |
| Publication Date: | Nov 1996 |
| Journal: | Annals of Operations Research |
| Authors: | Faynzilberg Peter S. |
| Keywords: | entropy |
The paper studies heterogeneity of large populations of decision-makers in terms of their choice behavior. It is argued that heterogeneity measures may be deduced from the aggregate data by application of the Maximum Entropy formalism. The case of the aggregate data being comprised of value shares is studied in detail; it is shown that the estimate of heterogeneity belongs to the product-form family of probability distributions.