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Trade-offs of Occupational Licensing: Understanding the Costs and Potential Benefits


  • 研討會日期 : 2021-01-18
  • 時間 : 10:30
  • 主講人 : Dr. Bobby (Wing Yin) Chung
  • 主持人 : Professor Tzu-Ting Yang
  • 地點 : Conference Room B110
  • 演講者簡介 : Dr. Chung received his Ph.D. in Economics from Clemson University in 2019. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Illinois. His research field are Labor, Education, and Health. He is applying for a position of the Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica now.
  • 演講摘要 : Occupational licensing potentially benefits consumers by screening and training workers but at the cost of lower employment. To evaluate this trade-off, I leverage a quasi-experimental setting in which Illinois required compliance training for new and existing real estate agents. Using multiple data sources on official licensee records and housing statistics, I find that the reform caused a one-time spike in agent outflows, a decrease in home sales, and lower worker flows. Whereas the reform affected worker sorting, I do not find a significant reduction in new misconduct incidents. To understand this insignificant effect, I develop a screening model with license training to highlight that licensing may fail to screen and train workers in ethics-related attributes.