reference library

People living in rural areas have worse health outcomes than their urban counterparts do. Understanding what factors account for this could inform policy interventions for reducing rural-urban disparities in health….
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The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is amending its medical regulations to permit full practice authority of three roles of VA advanced practice registered nurses (APRN) when they are acting…
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” Pew Health Professions Commission endorses the need to reform the regulatory system, the general vision articulated by the Taskforce on the future of the system, and the invitation to…
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“The Federation of State Medical Boards (the Federation) is a national non-profit association whose membership includes all medical licensing and disciplinary boards in the United States, and the U.S. territories….
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This brief describes a range of state-based regulations or policies that either limit or prohibit dental hygienists from sealing children’s teeth at school, or create financial burdens that work against…
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In recent years, college graduates have found themselves increasingly saddled with student loan debt. Even worse, many of these graduates fall behind on that debt sometimes through no fault of…
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Child care in the United States is expensive, but its cost varies greatly by region. Data from Child Care Aware of America, a nonprofit that works in child-care policy, indicate…
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An effective health care system needs to coordinate medical facilities with the behavioral and economic drivers in communities that are most related to good long-term health. Intermediaries can help this…
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Arkansas policy makers are aware of their state’s high criminal recidivism rates (the percentage of released prisoners that reoffend). The criminal justice reforms in Arkansas have also indicated that policy…
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Occupational licensing laws create minimum standards that individuals must meet to work in a number of fields. These minimum standards usually include competency tests, hours of practice, application fees, and…
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Nurse practitioners (NPs), physician assistants (PAs), and certified nurse midwives (CNMs) represent a growing part of the nation’s primary care workforce. These Advanced Practice Clinicians help expand primary care capacity…
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This article elaborates and evaluates the neo-Weberian notion of social closure to investigate positional inequality in the United States. It argues that social and legal barriers around occupations raise the…
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During the past few decades, licensure, a state-enforced mechanism for regulating occupational entry, quickly became the most prevalent form of occupational closure. Broad consensus among researchers holds that licensure creates…
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In A Fair Chance: Simple steps to strengthen and diversify the teacher workforce, NCTQ analysis reveals both astonishingly high numbers of elementary teacher candidates failing their professional licensing tests each…
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We assess the welfare consequences of occupational licensing for workers and consumers. We estimate a model of labor market equilibrium in which licensing restricts labor supply but also affects labor…
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This study finds that roughly 19 percent of American workers now have a license to work, with individual state percentages ranging from about 14 to 27 percent. It also finds…
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This article uses data from the Current Population Survey to analyze the role of professional certifications and occupational licenses in the U.S. labor market. It discusses the prevalence of these…
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We exploit state variation in licensing laws to study the effect of licensing on occupational choice using a boundary discontinuity design. We find that licensing reduces equilibrium labor supply by…
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A large literature demonstrates that occupational licensing is a labor market friction that distorts labor supply allocation and prices. We show that an occupational license serves as a job market…
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Myth: All licensing is necessary to protect public safety. Proponents often argue that the dramatic growth in occupational licensing is necessary to ensure consumer safety. However, the body of available…
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The paper looks at whether the propensity of young people to follow the same career path as one of their parents is driven by privileges of position arising from regulation…
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This study is the first of its kind to explore the relationship between three-year recidivism rates for new crimes and relate it to occupational licensing burdens by combining data from…
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Most previous work on occupational licensing has been concerned with effects on consumers. Proponents of licensing contend that the public may benefit from regulations that assure minimum quality. However, many…
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We document a large increase in the cyclicality of the incomes of high-income households, coinciding with the rise in their share of aggregate income. In the United States, since top…
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The costs of failing a licensing exam, for example, in dentistry is the estimated present value cost of failing the exam, which was $54,000 in 1997 dollars when reduced earnings…
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Using new data collected as part of the Current Population Survey, I focus on the ways that licensing affects the more than 20 percent of workers who have a license,…
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A 2017 study by the Institute for Justice (IJ) examined occupational licensure laws for 102 lower-income occupations and found that Michigan requires a license for 49 of them. Obtaining a…
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Building upon our earlier research, we have applied a macroeconomic dynamic scoring model developed by economists at The Buckeye Institute’s Economic Research Center to data collected by the U.S. Bureau…
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Recent assessments of occupational licensing have shown varying effects of the institution on labor market outcomes. This study revisits the relationship between occupational licensing and labor market outcomes by analyzing…
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We study the labor-market impacts of occupational licensing laws on nursing, an economically important occupation. States adopted licensing of registered and practical nurses at different times, which allows us to…
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One in three Americans has a criminal record. Given the significant size of this population, the ability for these individuals to attain economic success after they leave prison has tremendous…
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While the United States has long been a top destination for the world’s best and brightest, it has fallen short when it comes to fully tapping the skills and training…
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Occupational licensing is among the fastest-growing labor market institutions in the U.S. economy. One of the key features of occupational licensing is that the law determines who gets to do…
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Occupational licensing is invariably justified as a means of protecting the public against incompetent and dishonest practitioners. The effect of mandatory licensure, however, is often to restrict entry into an…
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This paper examines the costs and benefits of occupational regulation. Over 800 occupations arc licensed by at least one of the fifty states. When properly designed and administered, occupational licensing…
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Consistent with general growth in wage inequality over the period, the greatest wage growth occurred in licensed occupations with the highest levels of income. Wage growth in the U.S. economy…
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The human capital model is used as a framework for analysing the determinants of incomes of a sample of Canadian professions. The conventional earnings function is augmented by inclusion of…
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The costs of occupational licensing fall disproportionately on minorities and the poor. Licensing seeks to eliminate the lower-quality, lower-price services that low-income consumers would be more likely to select. Perhaps…
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The evidence available indicates that licensing tends to enhance the capabilities of the licensed professionals, resulting in better delivered quality. Often, however, this is not reflected in better quality received…
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This paper gathers, presents, and evaluates current state of economic research concerning the interconnection between occupational licensing (and other occupational) restrictions and quality of service. It considers empirical evidence on…
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Paralleling increased state involvement in teacher certification is the increase in teachers’ educational credentials, especially in public schools. For example, in 1971, over two-thirds of public-school teachers had a B.A.,…
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We present evidence that the natural gradient between Vietnamese manicurists and Vietnamese residents is suppressed in states with English proficiency requirements. Vietnamese who speak English poorly are especially likely to…
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Members of licensed occupations benefit from legal standards that limit entry into their professions. Is it ethical for these professionals to give political support to these standards? I examine the…
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This study provides the first nation-wide analysis of the labor market implications of occupational licensing for the U.S. labor market, using data from a specially designed Gallup survey. We find…
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This study examines the extent and influence of occupational licensing in the U.S. using a specially designed national labor force survey. Specifically, we provide new ways of measuring occupational licensing…
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We show that in both countries occupational licensing has a large impact on wage determination. The wage premium associated with licensing stands at approximately 18 per cent in the US…
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This article studies the effect of recruitment restrictions on mobility and wages in the postbellum U.S. South. I estimate the effects of criminal fines charged for “enticement” (recruiting workers already…
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Recent research has suggested that the reduction of entry regulation can promote firm entry and job creation, but little is known about the quality of firms and jobs created through…
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Regardless of these uncertainties, judicial intervention in the internal affairs of professional associations is destined to increase. The present century is widely interpreted as being in the throes of a…
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A 2009 Journal of Law and Economics article by Marc T. Law and Mindy S. Marks suggests that during the period 1890-1950 occupational licensing did not tend to affect blacks…
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Recent estimates in standard models of wage determination for both unionization and occupational licensing have shown wage effects that are similar across the two institutions. These cross-sectional estimates use specialized…
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Pundits at Slate and The Daily Beast have assured us America’s doctors are overpaid. Moreover, 21.5% of physicians are in households whose income places them in the top 1% of…
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Entry into licensed professions requires meeting competency requirements, typically assessed through licensing examinations. This paper explores whether the number of individuals attempting to enter a profession (potential supply) affects the…
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The analysis presented finds that local licensing of electricians is associated with approximately a 12-percent wage premium beyond that afforded by state regulations and that certain aspects of occupational requirements…
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Occupational licensing laws have been relaxed in a large number of U.S. states to give nurse practitioners the ability to perform more tasks without the supervision of medical doctors. We…
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This paper examines a common form of entry restriction: occupational licensing. The paper studies two questions: first, how occupational licensing laws affect the distribution of quality, and second, how the…
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If licensing places too many restrictions on this allocation of workers, it can reduce the overall efficiency of the labor market. When workers cannot enter jobs that make the best…
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This study considers the ways in which government, whether through spending programs or regulations, has made it more difficult for people to find their way out of poverty. It argues…
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[T]here is evidence that some licensing requirements create economic rents for licensed practitioners at the expense of excluded workers and consumers—increasing inefficiency and potentially also increasing inequality. First, the employment…
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Chairman Lee, Ranking Member Klobuchar, and Members of the Subcommittee: thank you for the opportunity to appear here today to testify about occupational licensing. This is an important economic issue,…
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While licensing is more prevalent in high-income professions such as healthcare and law, it is common in many middle- and lower-income professions as well. Among middle- and lower-income occupations with…
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In most occupations, licensing is associated with lower unemployment rates, even after adjusting for observable worker differences. Another way to describe this result is that unlicensed workers bear a greater…
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The [Current Population Survey] data augment knowledge of the extent and patterns of licensure, complementing previous efforts at measurement. The most commonly cited previous metrics of occupational licensure are the…
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State licensing schemes that mandate criminal background checks theoretically aim to protect health and safety. Inquiries into convictions that are directly related to the occupation—an elder-abuse conviction for long-term care…
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