In this paper we use individual-level census data on registered and practical nurses in the United States from 1950-70 to determine the effect that the switch from certification to licensure had on wages and participation in the registered and practical nurse professions. We examine these...

This paper investigates the effect of occupational licensing regulation on the representation of minority workers in a range of skilled and semiskilled occupations. We take advantage of a quasi experiment afforded by the introduction of state-level licensing regulation during the late nineteenth...

In this paper we respond to Daniel Klein, Benjamin Powell, and Evgeny Vorotnikov’s (henceforth KPV) critique of our 2009 Journal of Law and Economics paper on the effects of occupational regulation on the employment of female and black workers. Our view is that KPV have not successfully made...

We introduce a new instrument for family size, infertility, to investigate the causal relationship between children and female labor force participation. Infertility mimics an experiment where nature assigns an upper bound for family size, independent of a woman’s background. This new...