Occupational Licensing of Uber Drivers

Jonathan Hall, Jason F. Hicks (), Morris M. Kleiner and Yun Taek Oh
Additional contact information
Jason F. Hicks: https://www.uvic.ca/socialsciences/economics/faculty-staff/faculty-profiles/hicks-jason.php

No 687, Staff Report from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Abstract: We examine whether occupational licensing improves service quality and safety using trip-level Uber data that include driver ratings and telematics-based measures of driving behavior. Exploiting quasi-random assignment from proximity-based dispatch, we compare trips served by licensed and unlicensed drivers in two settings: a cross-border comparison between New York City and New Jersey, and a deregulation event in Houston. Across settings and specifications, including instrumental variable estimates, we find no consistent evidence that licensing improves consumer outcomes. In Houston, post-deregulation entrants are indistinguishable from previously licensed drivers on ratings and driving behavior, despite differing markedly in experience and age.

Keywords: Regulation; Labor markets; Occupational licensing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J00 J44 J48 J89 K29 L10 L80 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-08-25
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/sr/sr687.pdf (application/pdf)

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:fip:fedmsr:103697

DOI: 10.21034/sr.687

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff Report from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kate Hansel ().