How much does it cost to become a Licensed Clinical Social Worker?

There is little empirical evidence on the costs and benefits of licensing clinical social workers. Given the financial pressures faced by current students and a renewed national mandate to evaluate occupational licensing laws, it is important for social work to examine licensure in a rigorous manner. The following descriptive study calculated the average cost of attaining clinical licensure in social work for bachelor’s-level clinicians in the field. Using publicly available tuition data from the 250 graduate programs, 51 licensing boards, and anonymous survey data from 86 current social workers, the study provides an estimate of the cost of attaining licensure across 50 states and Washington, DC. Implications for aspiring social workers and social work policymakers are explored.

Institutional variation in occupational licensing and its consequences for wages. A distributional analysis for the USA and Germany.

Licensing is a central institution in labor markets worldwide. Using the example of the USA and Germany, this study shows strong institutional differences between licensing systems that are of great importance for wage distribution but are not yet part of the debate about the economic consequences of licensing. The two countries differ significantly in terms of the rules of entry into occupational labor markets, the competencies of occupational boards, and the combination of licensing with price regulation. I claim that licensing systems change the bargaining power and bargaining scope for wages, which leads to different wage premiums across the distribution and different consequences for wage inequality. Using novel license data, I empirically show that licensing is associated with the largest relative wage premium for German low-wage and American middle-wage workers. In addition, the USA system leads to greater dispersion among licensed workers and to higher wage inequality overall. In contrast, the German system compresses wages for licensed workers, thereby reducing overall wage inequality.

A Model of Occupational Licensing and Statistical Discrimination

We develop a model of statistical discrimination in occupational licensing with endogenous occupation selection and wage determination. We find a unique equilibrium with sharp comparative statics. Our key theoretical result is that the licensing premium is higher for workers who are members of demographic groups that face a higher cost of licensing. The predictions of the model can explain, for example, the empirical finding in the literature that occupational licenses that preclude felons close the racial wage gap among men by conferring a higher premium to Black men than to White men (Blair and Chung 2018).

How Labor Market Institutions Matter for Worker Compensation

Labor markets deviate substantially from the competitive ideal, and policies and institutions affect workers’ outcomes. Over the last 45 years, the dramatic increase in compensation of high earners and weak or stagnant growth for low and middle earners have shone a spotlight on the ways in which labor market institutions sometimes work to the detriment of lower-paid workers. In this article, we survey several institutions—minimum wages, private sector unions, noncompete agreements, and occupational licensing—considering how they have evolved in ways that affect workers’ outcomes, given that the labor market is characterized by uneven distribution of market gains. We describe the modern labor market as one that substantially features alternative work arrangements and labor market concentration, and we consider the implications of this for public policy. Those policies, along with the surveyed institutions, are the focus of our final section that discusses key options for improving worker outcomes.

Mortgage Brokers and the Effectiveness of Regulatory Oversights

This paper studies the responses among different types of mortgage brokers to occupational licensing regulations. By explicitly accounting for heterogeneities between sole and corporate brokers, we find evidence that sole brokers respond to financial regulatory oversight by applying a more stringent screening process in conducting brokerage activities, hence achieving better loan performances. Specifically, loans originated through sole brokers exhibit higher quality on an array of credit-relevant characteristics, including those reported and unreported to future investors. By contrast, we find no such regulatory effect on corporate brokers who tend to rely extensively on reported characteristics that are critical to the subsequent loan securitization at the expense of unreported information despite the latter indicating potential risks. Hence, the agency problem among sole brokers can be mitigated by the consolidated financial requirement for occupational licensing. However, such provision is ineffective in governing corporate brokers. Additionally, welfare gains associated with the occupational licensing regulation are achieved at the expense of prospective borrowers paying a higher loan price and having reduced credit access. Stricter licensing regulations may induce welfare loss related to credit rationing as reasonable loan applications are not funded, including those with potentially lower default risk.This paper was accepted by Kay Giesecke, finance.