Analyzing occupational licensing among the states

Morris M. Kleiner () and Evgeny Vorotnikov
Additional contact information
Morris M. Kleiner: University of Minnesota, NBER
Evgeny Vorotnikov: Fannie Mae

Journal of Regulatory Economics, 2017, vol. 52, issue 2, No 3, 132-158

Abstract: Abstract The study provides new evidence of the influence of occupational regulations on the U.S. economy. Our analysis, unlike previous studies, was able to obtain a representative sample of the population at the state level, which allowed us to estimate the cross-sectional effects of occupational licensing for each state. The state-level analysis demonstrates considerable variation in percentage of the workforce that has attained a license, and unlike minimum wages or unionization, licensing shows no regional patterns in the distribution of occupational licensing. The analysis also shows considerable variation in the influence of licensing on earnings across the states. The national estimates suggest that occupational licensing raises wages by about 11% after controlling for human capital and other observable characteristics. Finally, our analysis shows the influence of occupational regulation on wage inequality across the income distribution.

Keywords: Occupational licensing; Wage determination with occupational licensing; Income inequality with occupational licensing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11149-017-9333-y Abstract (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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:regeco:v:52:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s11149-017-9333-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... on/journal/11149/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11149-017-9333-y

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Regulatory Economics is currently edited by Menaham Spiegel

More articles in Journal of Regulatory Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().