Scholarlink

<p>For more than 20% of workers in the US, a mandatory requirement to begin working is obtaining a license. Since operating a business also often requires an occupational license, individuals who want to become self-employed face a similar barrier. We seek to better understand the extent that occupational licensing operates as a barrier to self-employment. Focusing on employed and unemployed individuals, we study switches from occupations as well as into self-employment in a two-way fixed effects model controlling for selection bias using a two–stage Heckman approach in a panel dataset from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) for the years 2013–2019 in the US. We find suggestive evidence that licensing is a barrier to both choice of occupation and self-employment. Our results suggest that when an employed individual lacks an occupational license that this negatively correlates with both becoming self-employed and changing an occupation. For unemployed individuals, licensing is negatively correlated with finding a job and becoming self-employed. Thus, our results provide supporting evidence that occupational licensing is a barrier to entry into both choice of occupation and self-employment.</p>

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

Is occupational licensing a barrier to self-employment?

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年3月31日

查看全文
  • Ilya Kukaev,
  • Edward J. Timmons

摘要

For more than 20% of workers in the US, a mandatory requirement to begin working is obtaining a license. Since operating a business also often requires an occupational license, individuals who want to become self-employed face a similar barrier. We seek to better understand the extent that occupational licensing operates as a barrier to self-employment. Focusing on employed and unemployed individuals, we study switches from occupations as well as into self-employment in a two-way fixed effects model controlling for selection bias using a two–stage Heckman approach in a panel dataset from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) for the years 2013–2019 in the US. We find suggestive evidence that licensing is a barrier to both choice of occupation and self-employment. Our results suggest that when an employed individual lacks an occupational license that this negatively correlates with both becoming self-employed and changing an occupation. For unemployed individuals, licensing is negatively correlated with finding a job and becoming self-employed. Thus, our results provide supporting evidence that occupational licensing is a barrier to entry into both choice of occupation and self-employment.