A Snapshot of Occupational Licensing Regulation in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic States
August 8, 2020
By: Stephen Strosko
Download the the Policy Brief discussed in this post here:
Recently co-published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the Knee Center for the Study of Occupational Regulation at St. Francis University, a new policy brief highlights some truly extraordinary findings in the realm of occupational licensing.
Published just a few months ago, Occupational Licensing RegData provides researchers with a way to quantify occupational licensing regulation at the state level. To form the dataset, a custom machine learning algorithm was trained to identify occupational licensing regulatory text. This algorithm was then run on the regulatory text collected for the State RegData project. After identifying which text contains language related to occupation licensing, it is easy to quantify that language with simple word counts or term searches. More extensive methods can also be used to associate that text with industries, occupations, and topics.
Using these methods on a sample of Midwest and Midatlantic states (Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland), scholars Kofi Ampaabeng, Conor Norris, and Edward J. Timmons find that “…Indiana was the most stringently regulated state, having the most restrictions and total words pertaining to occupational licensing…Ohio was a close second with respect to occupational licensing restrictions and word count. Pennsylvania and Maryland were the least restrictive states in our group, with far fewer restrictions and total words than Indiana and Ohio.”
The policy brief does not stop with a high level analysis. These scholars also dive into an examination of the complexity of each state’s occupational licensing regulations, the occupations that are most heavily regulated, and the reasoning behind their methodology. With a rich dataset to explore, this will brief will hopefully be the first in a series of many that highlight regional trends in occupational licensing regulations.