This paper contributes to ongoing debates on international income comparisons by deploying a novel methodology for constructing empirical distribution functions for the United States and Canada over the period 1993 - 2000. We also conduct tests for first, second, third order stochastic dominance and of intersection of distributions, to determine which,if either, country might be a preferred destination for migration. Our findings are for that all of the years for which there is comparable data, the Canadian income distribution second order stochastically dominates the US income distribution. We provide an interpretation in terms of expected utility theory, considering the case of log utility, and relate our findings to an argument by Joseph Stiglitz, that in the face of skewness of income distributions a potential migrant should look at the median rather than the mean. It turns out that Stiglitz's intuition is correct, at least in the context of our study.
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Paper provided by Carleton University, Department of Economics in its series Carleton Economic Papers with number
08-02.
Find related papers by JEL classification: C12 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: General - - - Hypothesis Testing D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
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