Barber Licensure and the Supply of Barber Shops: Evidence from US States

Joshua Hall and Shree Pokharel
Additional contact information
Shree Pokharel: West Virginia University, Department of Economics

No 16-15, Working Papers from Department of Economics, West Virginia University

Abstract: Occupational licensure is on the rise. According to Kleiner (2015), over 29 percent of the U.S. workforce required some form of license. While a number of studies estimate the wage effects of occupational licensure, few studies look at the impact of licensure on entry into new business formation. In this paper we focus on the impact on barber shops, since many barber shops are sole proprietorships. Using state-level data on the occupational licensure of barbers from the Institute for Justice, we find that the number of exams required to become a barber is negatively related to the number of barber shops. We find no evidence that other state-level regulations of barbering such as average fees or the minimum age necessary to practice are associated with fewer barber shops.

Keywords: barbering; governmental occupational regulation; total barber shops per capita (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2016-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/cgi/viewcontent ... =econ_working-papers (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

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:wvu:wpaper:16-15

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Department of Economics, West Virginia University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Feng Yao ().