Capitalism and Freedom

GIS-based spatial modeling of COVID-19 incidence rate in the continental United States.

Background
Many studies have reported a positive association between smoking and suicide, but the results are inconsistent. This meta-analysis was carried out to estimate the association between smoking and suicidal ideation, suicide plan, suicide attempt, and suicide death.

/pdf/smoking-and-suicide-a-meta-analysis-3dmc6czmqg.pdf

Smoking and Suicide: A Meta-Analysis.

Nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) now outnumber family practice doctors in the United States and are the principal providers of primary care to many communities. Recent growth of these professions has occurred amidst considerable cross-state variation in their regulation, with some states permitting autonomous practice and others mandating extensive physician oversight. I find that expanded NP and PA supply has had minimal impact on the office-based healthcare market overall, but utilization has been modestly more responsive to supply increases in states permitting greater autonomy. Results suggest the importance of laws impacting the division of labor, not just its quantity.

How Does Provider Supply and Regulation Influence Health Care Market? Evidence from Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants

Rising profitability and market valuations of US businesses, sluggish wage growth and a declining labor share of income, and reduced unemployment and inflation, have defined the macroeconomic environment of the last generation. This paper offers a unified explanation for these phenomena based on reduced worker power. Using individual, industry, and state-level data, we demonstrate that measures of reduced worker power are associated with lower wage levels, higher pr ofit shares, and reductions in measures of the NAIRU. We argue that the declining worker power hypothesis is more compelling as an explanation for observed changes than increases in firms’ market power, both because it can simultaneously explain a falling labor share and a reduced NAIRU, and because it is more directly supported by the data.

/pdf/the-declining-worker-power-hypothesis-an-explanation-for-the-13gtwy58jf.pdf

The Declining Worker Power Hypothesis: An Explanation for the Recent Evolution of the American Economy

In this paper, we analyze the development of occupational regulation of massage therapists in the United States as well as the effects of state licensing and certification on their earnings and numbers. Our results suggest that massage therapists working in states with licensing receive an earnings premium of as much as 16.2 percent. We also find some evidence that licensing seems to reduce the number of massage therapists. We find less convincing evidence that certification has had similar effects. We argue that, taken together, our results suggest that licensing restricts entry at the expense of consumers and that its effects are less likely to be explained by other competing factors.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/667840

Licensing One of the World's Oldest Professions: Massage

We analyze the effect that state licensing of radiologic technologists (RTs) has had upon RT wages with a unique dataset that allows us to control for place of work and job specialization. Using OLS and several measures of licensing, we find evidence that RTs working in states with licensing statutes earn as much as 3.3% more than RTs working in states without licensing. When we control for endogeneity using instrumental variables (IV) estimation, our estimate of the licensing premium doubles (6.9%). Our results provide further support for existing theories of the effects of occupational licensing on the wages of practitioners.

The Effects of Licensing on the Wages of Radiologic Technologists

The effects of expanded nurse practitioner and physician assistant scope of practice on the cost of Medicaid patient care

Barbering is one of the earliest professions to be licensed in the USA. This article discusses the origins of barber licensing, as well as its current status and scope, and then estimates the effects that such licensing has had on barbers' earnings. To estimate these effects we use micro-level data from the 2000 US Census along with several measures of the strictness of state licensing of barbers. Our results suggest that certain licensing provisions may have increased barber earnings by between 11 and 22 per cent. The magnitude of our estimates is somewhat higher than those found in studies examining the effects of licensing in similar professions.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/bjir_811.pdf?abstractid=1694828&mirid=1

The Licensing of Barbers in the USA

OBJECTIVES: We address whether smoking is related to suicidal ideation in teens and whether there is evidence of a causal pathway. METHODS: We use data from the 2002 National Annenberg Survey of Youth and employ multivariate logistic regression to model each teen's risk of suicidal ideation as a function of self-report of depressive symptoms, own smoking, parent smoking, and demographic and household income variables. RESULTS: Individuals reporting depressive symptoms have an increased risk of suicidal ideation (odds ratio [OR] = 13.13; 95% CI = 5.98-28.81). Relative to teens who do not smoke and whose parents do not smoke, teens who smoke and do not have a parent who smokes have increased risk of suicidal ideation (OR = 8.10; 95% CI = 2.88-22.80), whereas those with a parent who smokes do not have a statistically significant increased risk of suicidal ideation regardless of teen smoking behavior. CONCLUSION: Relative to teens who do not smoke and do not have parents who smoke, suicidal ideation risk is increased in teens who smoke only if they do not have a parent who smokes. We find evidence that the smoking and suicidal ideation of the teens is likely due to common psychosocial causes rather than a causal pathway from smoking to suicidal ideation. Language: en

Edward Timmons

Papers

Licensing One of the World's Oldest Professions: Massage

The Effects of Licensing on the Wages of Radiologic Technologists

The effects of expanded nurse practitioner and physician assistant scope of practice on the cost of Medicaid patient care

The Licensing of Barbers in the USA

Smoking, parent smoking, depressed mood, and suicidal ideation in teens