In this essay I selectively survey the economic history literature on the rise of regulation in America during the Progressive Era with the goal of identifying how this literature is informed by Austrian economic theory, and how Austrian theory might contribute to our understanding of the...

We investigate the contemporaneous mortality consequences of alcohol prohibition laws introduced in America between 1900 and 1920. We improve on existing studies by constructing a time-varying measure of prohibition at the state-level that corrects for the timing of prohibition enforcement and...

This paper explores the origins and effects of occupational licensing regulation in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. Was licensing regulation introduced to limit competition in the market for professional services at the expense of efficiency? Or was licensing adopted to...

This paper investigates the relationship between the characteristics of medical licensing boards and the frequency with which boards discipline physicians. Specifically, we take advantage of variation in the structure of medical licensing boards between 1993 and 2003 to determine the effect of...