Doctors Without Borders: The Returns to an Occupational License for Soviet Immigrant Physicians in Israel

Adriana Kugler and Robert Sauer

No 634, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Re-licensing requirements for professionals that move across borders are widespread. In this paper, we measure the returns to an occupational license using novel data on Soviet trained physicians that immigrated to Israel. An immigrant re-training assignment rule used by the Israel Ministry of Health provides an exogenous source of variation in re-licensing outcomes. Instrumental variables and quantile treatment effects estimates of the returns to an occupational license indicate excess wages due to occupational entry restrictions and negative selection into licensing status. We develop a model of optimal license acquisition which suggests that the wages of high-skilled immigrant physicians in the nonphysician sector outweigh the lower direct costs that these immigrants face in acquiring a medical license. Licensing thus leads to lower average quality of service. However, the positive earnings effect of entry restrictions far outweighs the lower practitioner quality earnings effect that licensing induces.

Keywords: occupational mobility; information and product quality; regulation; licensing; immigration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D45 J17 J24 J31 J61 J62 L15 L51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2002-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published in: Journal of Labor Economics, 2005, 23 (3), 437-466

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp634.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Doctors without Borders: The Returns to an Occupational License for Soviet Immigrant Physicians in Israel (2003)
Working Paper: Doctors without borders: The returns to an occupational license for Soviet immigrant physicians in Israel (2002)
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:iza:izadps:dp634

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().