Effects of Occupational Licensing Laws on Minorities: Evidence from the Progressive Era
利用19世纪末至20世纪中期美国各州引入职业许可法规的准实验，研究许可制度对女性和黑人劳动者在技能和半技能职业中代表性的影响，发现许可很少损害少数族裔，反而常有助于他们，尤其在难以判断工人质量的职业中。
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 and mid‐twentieth centuries to identify the effects of licensing on female and black workers. We find that licensing laws seldom harmed minority workers. In fact, licensing often helped minorities, particularly in occupations for which information about worker quality was difficult to ascertain.