The Impact of Potential Labor Supply on Licensing Exam Difficulty in the US Market for Lawyers

Mario Pagliero

No 53, Carlo Alberto Notebooks from Collegio Carlo Alberto

Abstract: This paper provides the first systematic evidence of variation across states and over time in the number and quality of individuals attempting to enter a regulated profession (potential supply), and in the stringency of entry requirements. There are surprisingly large differences in the difficulty of the entry examination in the market for lawyers both across states and over time. The paper explores the possibility of a link between potential supply and the difficulty of the entry examination. At the cross-sectional level, the data is consistent with growth in potential supply leading to more difficult licensing exams. Also the timing of changes in standards at the US level is consistent with this hypothesis. However, the existing data does not allow drawing final conclusions from within-state variability in exam difficulty.

Keywords: professional licensing; legal market; bar exam; minimum standards; entry regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L4 L5 J4 K2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-lab and nep-law
Date: 2007, Revised 2009
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.carloalberto.org/files/no.53.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of Potential Labor Supply on Licensing Exam Difficulty in the US Market for Lawyers (2007)
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:cca:wpaper:53

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Carlo Alberto Notebooks from Collegio Carlo Alberto
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Giovanni Bert ().