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EconomistPunter t1_j9wo77z wrote

Cool study. Does suggest that using a signal to impute quality for consumers can have sizable losses, for those who wouldn’t get a license but would work, and for consumers.

The distributional impact is also important, as higher prices may preclude lower income Americans from performing needed repairs.

Note that this welfare loss does not take into account quality measures of work performed, which would mitigate the losses.

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LairdPopkin t1_j9zl06s wrote

Since the entire point of licensing is to drive up quality, because there is a harm to incompetent practitioners in many areas, it feels to me like the study is intentionally constructed to be misleading.

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EconomistPunter t1_j9znjxy wrote

And, unfortunately, the existence of unintended consequences to laws, as well as ineffective language, means that implementation often falls short of intention.

This is an important study.

Edit: your mindset would have derided follow up studies to Brown versus Board of Education, which almost uniformly found less than expected Black economic progress, because equal access did not imply equal resources. It’s a terrible mindset.

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