This paper attempts to provide a synthetic view of varied techniques available for performing inference on income distributions. Two main approaches can be distinguished: one in which the object of interest is some index of income inequality or poverty, the other based on notions of stochastic...

Extensions are presented to the results of Davidson and Duclos (2007), whereby the null hypothesis of restricted stochastic non dominance can be tested by both asymptotic and bootstrap tests, the latter having considerably better properties as regards both size and power. In this paper, the...

Testing for a unit root in a series obtained by summing a stationary MA(1) process with a parameter close to -1 leads to serious size distortions under the null, on account of the near cancellation of the unit root by the MA component in the driving stationary series. The situation is analysed...

Bayesians and non-Bayesians, often called frequentists, seem to be perpetually at logger- heads on fundamental questions of statistical inference. This paper takes as agnostic a stand as is possible for a practising frequentist, and tries to elicit a Bayesian answer to questions of interest to...

We derive the asymptotic sampling distribution of various estimators frequently used to order distributions in terms of poverty, welfare and inequality. This includes estimators of most of the poverty indices currently in use, as well as estimators of the curves used to infer stochastic...