Master's of Economics Programs: Comparing Canada and the United States

Abstract

This paper compares various characteristics of terminal Master's of Economics programs in Canada and the United States. As far as we know this is the first published paper to present results from a survey of Canadian Master's programs in Economics. Using a Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test we find that there are significant differences between the Canadian and U.S. programs. All of the Canadian Master's of Economics programs in our sample are in public institutions and the vast majority of their programs are located in colleges of Arts and Sciences. Canadian programs seem to have higher admission standards, and are more likely to offer teaching and research assistantships. A higher percentage of the graduates of Canadian programs are placed in careers in government, while U.S. programs place a higher percentage of their graduates in the private sector. In addition to these and other statically significant differences, the paper also illustrates that in a large number of areas the Canadian and U.S. programs are similar.

JEL Classification: A23