Occupational Licensing

Via Tyler Cowen, a new paper from Morris Kleiner and Alan Krueger takes a look at occupational licensing. The paper ends on the rather dull note that it would be smart for the federal government to start trying to collect better data on this phenomenon. It’s dull but, to me, quite convincing. There’s no real political constituency for better federal data-gathering practices, but it’s actually pretty important. People study what it’s feasible to study.