The Efficiency of Occupational Licensing during the Gilded and Progressive Eras: Evidence from Judicial Review
利用司法审查实践，评估镀金时代与进步时代职业许可法规的效率与分配效应，发现法官更可能支持存在信息不对称的职业许可，表明宪法审查促进了职业市场效率。
This paper proposes a novel approach to assessing the efficiency and distributional consequences of occupational licensing statutes during the Gilded and Progressive eras, based on the practice of judicial review. At the time, state judges ruling on the constitutionality of police powers regulation operated under powerful legal norms that militated against redistribution and class legislation. Evidence presented in the paper strongly suggests that judges were significantly more likely to uphold, on constitutional grounds, occupational licensing legislation for occupations with important information asymmetries, suggesting that constitutional review promoted efficiency in occupational markets. These findings have implications for current policies regarding occupational licensing.