Effects of Occupational Licensing Laws on Minorities: Evidence from the Progressive Era

Marc T. Law () and Mindy S. Marks

Journal of Law & Economics, 2009, vol. 52, issue 2, pages 351-366

Abstract: This paper investigates the effect of occupational licensing regulation on the representation of minority workers in a range of skilled and semiskilled occupations. We take advantage of a quasi experiment afforded by the introduction of state-level licensing regulation during the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries to identify the effects of licensing on female and black workers. We find that licensing laws seldom harmed minority workers. In fact, licensing often helped minorities, particularly in occupations for which information about worker quality was difficult to ascertain. (c) 2009 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..

Date: 2009

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/596714 link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:jlawec:v:52:y:2009:i:2:p:351-366

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE/order1.html

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Law & Economics is edited by Dennis W. Carlton, Austan Goolsbee, Randall S. Krosner, Douglas Lichtman and Edward A. Snyder

More articles in Journal of Law & Economics from University of Chicago Press
Address: The University of Chicago Press, Journals Division, P.O. Box 37005 Chicago, IL 60637
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().