Overview

Abstract (English)

The thesis begins with an introductory chapter that discusses the current state of occupational licensing research and motivates the analysis through the importance of occupational licensing, similar to unionization, to both labour market theory and public policy. The first paper in this thesis asks whether or not Canadian licensed workers earn higher wages than unlicensed workers. The paper also compares licensing pay premium to union wage premium. Based on longitudinal data from the Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) from 1993 to 2011, a pay premium of approximately 12.0% is estimated for occupational licensing, slightly higher than the union wage premium, as 9.0%. These results are based on a cross-section of respondents using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) estimates. Fixed-effect estimates from the longitudinal data (2.6% and 4.0% for licensing and unionization, respectively), however, are much lower than the OLS amounts, suggesting the importance of unobservable factors that are correlated with licensing and union status in determining the wage premium of workers. The second paper further investigates whether or not wage premiums are uniform across the wage distribution. Using unconditional quantile regression methods, I investigated how occupational licensing and unionization impact the wage distribution of Canadian workers between 1998 and 2014. Unionization decreases wage inequality in upper-wage earners, but increases wage inequality in lower-wage earners. Occupational licensing, on the other hand, increases inequality across the entire wage distribution. The third paper focuses on the impacts of occupational licensing and unionization on young workers inter-provincial mobility decision. Using Canadian Longitudinal data from the Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) from 1993 to 2010, the results of both multilevel modeling analysis and linear probability models with clustered standard errors show that, unlike unionization which restricts labour mobility, individuals’ licensing status is not correlated with the likelihood of moving across provincial boundaries for young Canadians aged 21-34. The final component of the theses is an Appendix that presents a newly constructed occupational licensing index, which is based on an authoritative Canadian jurisdictional review. I define occupational licensing based on the exclusive-right-to-practice clause, and occupational certification based on the exclusive-right-title clause in the legislation, and construct licensing indicators to carry the empirical analyses of the effects of occupational licensing in Canada.

Abstract (French)

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