Job Market Signaling through Occupational LicensingPeter Q. Blair, Bobby W. Chung
NBER Working Paper No. 24791 We show that an occupational license serves as a job market signal, similar to education in the Spence model. In the presence of occupational licensing, we find evidence that firms rely less on observable characteristics such as race and gender in determining employee wages. As a result, licensed minorities and women experience smaller wage gaps than their unlicensed peers. Black men benefit from licenses that signal non-felony status, whereas white women benefit from licenses with a human capital requirement. Certification, a less distortionary alternative to licensing, generates an equivalent wage premium for white men, but lower wage premiums than licensing for women and black men. You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery.
Supplementary materials for this paper: Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w24791 |

Contact Us