The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Does Regulation Affect Economic Outcomes? The Case of Dentistry
Open accessAbstract
This study examines the role of variations in occupational licensing policies in improving the quality of services provided to consumers and the effect of restrictive regulations on the prices of certain services and on the earnings of practitioners. Theory suggests that more restrictive licensing may raise prices, but that it may also raise demand by reducing uncertainty about the quality of the services. This paper uses unique data on the dental health of incoming Air Force personnel to analyze empirically the effects of varying licensing stringency among the states. We find that tougher licensing does not improve outcomes, but it does raise prices and earnings of practitioners. Our results cast doubt on the principal public interest argument in favor of more stringent state licensing practices.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Licensure could lead to higher prices and reduced access to the service, causing consumers to substitute towards cheaper, inferior alternatives.
“Perhaps the most important among these is the possibility that licensure could lead to higher prices and reduced access to the service in question, causing consumers to substitute towards cheaper, inferior alternatives (Shepard 1978; Adams et al. 2003; Kleiner and Kudrle 2000; Kleiner et al. 2014).”
From The Effect of Occupational Licensing on Consumer Welfare: Early Midwifery Laws and Maternal Mortality (2016) · cites this paper as Kleiner and Kudrle 2000
The Conclusions (p. 28) report that stricter dental licensing raised prices and could limit customer access. The paper does not say that consumers consequently substitute cheaper, inferior alternatives; its discussion of potentially worse service quality in the Introduction (p. 3) does not establish that mechanism. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
No references could be resolved yet.
Research works printed but not linked: 42
- Kenneth J Arrow, 1971, Essays in the Theory of Risk-Bearing
- David Bartholomew, 1996, The Statistical Approach to Social Measurement
- Lee Benham, 1980, The Demand for Occupational Licensure, Occupational Licensure and Regulation, 13
- David Boesel, 1989, The DOD Survey of Recruit Socioeconomic Backgrounds
- Brian Boulier, 1980, An Empirical Examination of Licensure and Licensure Reform on the Geographic Distribution of Dentists, Occupational Licensure and Regulation, 73
- Sidney L Carroll, 1981, Occupational Restrictions and the Quality of Service Received: Some Evidence, Southern Economic Journal, 47, 959, 10.2307/1058155 · DOI · Paper page
- Dennis W Carlton, 1994, Modern Industrial Organization
- A G Christen, 1979, United States Air Force Survey of Dental Needs, 1977 Methodology and Summary of Findings, Journal of the American Dental Association, 98, 726, 10.14219/jada.archive.1979.0129 · DOI
- 1987, KY: Council of State Governments, Council of State Governments. Occupational Licensing. Lexington
- 1993, Dental Economics. Unpublished Tables on Prices of Dental Procedures by State, 10.14219/jada.archive.1915.0001 · DOI
- Richard B Freeman, 1975, Legal Cobwebs: The Changing Market for Lawyers, Review of Economics and Statistics, 57, 171, 10.2307/1923998 · DOI
- Richard B Freeman, 1990, The Impact of New Unionization on Wages and Working Conditions, Journal of Labor Economics, 8, 8, 10.1086/298243 · DOI
- Milton Friedman, 1945, Income from Independent Professional Practice
- Victor R Fuchs, 1982, Time Preference and Health: An Exploratory Study, Economic Aspects of Health, Victor R. Fuchs, 93, 10.3386/w0539 · DOI
- M Getz, 1981, Competition at the Bar: The Correlation Between the Bar Examination Pass Rate and Profitability of Practice, Virginia Law Review, 67, 863, 10.2307/1072815 · DOI
- Arlene Holen, 1978, The Economics of Dental Licensing, Final Report submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services
- H Klein, 1938, Studies on Dental Caries: Dental Status and Dental Needs of Elementary School Children, Public Health Reporter, 53, 751, 10.2307/4582532 · DOI
- Morris M Kleiner, 1990, Are There Economic Rents for More Restrictive Occupational Licensing Practices?, In Proceedings, 177
- Morris M Kleiner, 1982, Barriers to Labor Migration: The Case of Occupational Licensing, Industrial Relations, 21, 383, 10.1111/j.1468-232x.1982.tb00245.x · DOI
- Morris M Kleiner, 1992, Do Tougher Licensing Provisions Limit Occupational Entry: The Case of Dentistry?, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, 3984, 10.3386/w3984 · DOI
- J W Knutson, 1940, Dental Needs of Grade, Journal of the American Dental Association, 27, 579
- Helena Kraemer, 1987, How Many Subjects? Statistical Power Analysis
- Robert T Kudrle, 1980, In National Health Insurance: Conflicting Goals and Policy Choices
- Robert T Kudrle, 1983, In Reducing the Cost of Dental Care
- Hayne E Leland, 1980, Minimum quality Standards In Markets with Asymmetric Information, Occupational Licensure and Regulation, 265
- Roderick Little, 1987, Statistical Analysis with Missing Data
- Mark Marcus, 1980, An Empirically Derived Measure of Oral Health Status for Adult Populations, Journal of Public Health Dentistry, 40, 334, 10.1111/j.1752-7325.1980.tb01051.x · DOI
- Mark Marcus, 1983, Construction of a Population Index of Adult Oral Health Status Derived From Dentists' Preferences, Journal of Public Health Dentistry, 43, 284, 10.1111/j.1752-7325.1983.tb01927.x · DOI
- Alex Maurizi, 1974, Occupational Licensing and the Public Interest, Journal of Political Economy, 82, 399, 10.1086/260199 · DOI
- Lawrence Meskin, 1994, Time for A Dental Board Checkup, Journal of the American Dental Association, 125, 1418, 10.14219/jada.archive.1994.0218 · DOI
- Brent R Moulton, 1986, Random Group Effects and the Precision of Regression Estimates, Journal of Econometrics, 32, 385, 10.1016/0304-4076(86)90021-7 · DOI
- Derrick Neal, 1996, The Role of Pre-Market Factors in Black-White Wage Differences, Journal of Political Economy, 104, 869, 10.1086/262045 · DOI · Paper page
- Joseph P Newhouse, 1993, Free for All? Lessons from the RAND Health Insurance Experiment
- W Oi, 1973, The Economics of Public Safety, Bell Journal of Economics, 4, 3, 10.2307/3003137 · DOI
- B Pashigian, 1980, Has Occupational Licensing Reduced Geographical Mobility and Raised Earnings?, In Occupational Licensure and Regulation, 299
- Solomon W Polachek, 1981, Occupational Self-Selection: A Human Capital Approach to Sex Differences in Occupational Structure, Review of Economics and Statistics, 63, 60, 10.2307/1924218 · DOI
- Carl Shapiro, 1986, Investment, Moral Hazard and Occupational Licensing, Review of Economic Studies, 53, 843, 10.2307/2297722 · DOI · Paper page
- Lawrence Shepard, 1978, Licensing Restrictions and the Cost of Dental Care, Journal of Law and Economics, 4, 185, 10.1086/466916 · DOI · Paper page
- R J Stepnick, 1975, Dental Caries, Periodontal Disease, and Oral Hygiene Interrelationships in Naval Recruits
- 1988, Vital Health Statistics, Dental Statistics
- Andrew Wang, 1997, Economic Reform and State Enterprise Productivity in China: An Application of Robust Estimation and Latent Variable Measurement Methods
- Charles J Wheelan, 1999, Politics or Public Interest? An Empirical Examination of Occupational Licensure
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Occupational Licensing and Maternal Health: Evidence from Early Midwifery Laws
Anderson, D. M., Brown, R., Charles, K. K., & Rees, D. I. (2020) · Journal of Political Economy · doi:10.1086/710555 · Cited by 98
Anderson, D. M., Brown, R., Charles, K. K., & Rees, D. (2016) · National Bureau of Economic Research · doi:10.3386/w22456 · Cited by 19
Metadata
- Authors
- Kleiner, M. M., & Kudrle, R. T.
- Affiliations
- University of Minnesota (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kleiner, Morris M.
- ORCID
- Kleiner, Morris M.
- Venue
- SSRN Electronic Journal
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2000
- ISSN
- 1556-5068 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2032868496
- Cited by
- 52
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 5 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 2
- Type
- posted content
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- bepress Legal Repository (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Law › Occupational and Professional Licensing Regulation
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Healthcare Regulation
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Healthcare Policy and Management
- Keywords
- professional licensing, dental licensure, price regulation, service quality, consumer uncertainty, public interest, government regulation, health care prices
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
