Tougher Licensing Requirements and Quality Outcomes: Driving Instructors in the United Kingdom

"The book provides a comprehensive approach to whether a dominant governmental institution in the labor market-occupational licensing-greases, which enhances, or on the other hand results in grit, which diminishes the efficient workings of ..

A review of occupational regulation and its impact

This Evidence Report develops a deeper understanding of the nature and impact of occupational regulation in the UK. The term, occupational regulation, is a broad heading for various mechanisms (including licence to practice and voluntary forms) through which minimum skill standards are applied within occupations. As such, occupational regulation is one of a range of levers, or best market solutions, which are designed to encourage employers to train on a collective basis. The use of occupational regulation as a mechanism for increasing the demand for, and supply of, skills was considered alongside other measures, as part of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills’ Review of Employer Collective Measures. However, that Review acknowledged the general topic of occupational regulation was under researched in the UK. This research, conducted by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, helps to address this and deepens our knowledge of the area by: providing a discussion on the existing theory on occupational regulation by examining existing economic literature; providing a detailed review of the existing evidence on occupational regulation in the UK, America, Canada and Europe (Germany, France and Italy), again via existing literature; providing a comprehensive map of occupational regulation in the UK, through the mapping of managerial, professional and non-professional occupations at the Unit Group level of the Standard Occupational Classification (2000); producing estimates of the labour market impact of occupational regulation in the UK. Its prevalence is estimated by comparing the mapping output with Unit Group data obtained from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS). Further analysis, via cross-sectional analysis, produces estimates on levels of qualifications, wages and rates of job-related training between workers in regulated and unregulated occupations. This uses QLFS 2010 data. And a Difference-in-Differences analysis is employed to evaluate the impact of switches in regulation status on skill levels, job-related education and training, wages and employment. This uses QLFS data between 2001 and 2010

Grease or Grit?: International Case Studies of Occupational Licensing and Its Effects on Efficiency and Quality

The book provides a comprehensive approach to whether a dominant governmental institution in the labor market-occupational licensing-greases, which enhances, or on the other hand results in grit, which diminishes the efficient workings of labor and service markets in parts of Europe and the United States. The detailed case studies in the book indicate that an increase in the availability of service providers or enhanced competition does not have negative effects on the quality of the services provided, prices, or survey measures of consumer satisfaction.https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/1288/thumbnail.jp

Occupational licensing and the gender wage gap

We use a unique survey of the EU labor force to investigate the relationship between occupational licensing and the gender wage gap. We find that the gender wage gap is canceled for licensed self-employed workers. However, this closure of the gender wage gap is not mirrored by significant changes in the gender gap inhours worked. Our results are robust using decomposition methods, quantile regressions, different datasets, and selection correction

Occupational regulation, institutions, and migrants labor market outcomes

We study how licensing, certification and unionisation affect the wages of natives and migrants and their representation among licensed, certified, and unionized workers. We provide evidence of a dual role of labor market institutions, which both screen workers based on unobservable characteristics and also provide them with wage setting power. Labor market institutions confer significant wage premia to native workers (3.9, 1.6, and 2.7 log points for licensing, certification, and unionization respectively), due to screening and wage setting power. Wage premia are significantly larger for licensed and certified migrants (10.2 and 6.6 log points), reflecting a more intense screening of migrant than native workers. The representation of migrants among licensed (but not certified or unionized) workers is 14% lower than that of natives. This implies a more intense screening of migrants by licensing institutions than by certification and unionization

Investigating the Structure and Meaning of Public Service Motivation across Populations: Developing an International Instrument and Addressing Issues of Measurement Invariance

The growth in international research on public service motivation (PSM) raises a number of important questions about the degree to which the theory and research developed in one country can contribute to our understanding of PSM in other counties. To help address this issue, this study revisits the conceptual and operational definitions of PSM to address weaknesses previously noted in the literature. Although some important steps have been taken to both improve and internationalize the PSM scale, this work has been done incrementally. In contrast, this study takes a more systematic and comprehensive approach by combining the efforts of international PSM scholars to develop and then test a revised measurement instrument for PSM in 12 countries. Although the resulting four dimensional 16-item measure of PSM reported here provides a better theoretical and empirical foundation for the measurement of PSM, our results suggest that the exact meaning and scaling of PSM dimensions are likely to differ across cultures and languages. These results raise serious concerns regarding the ability to develop a single universal scale of PSM, or making direct comparisons of PSM across countrie

Regulatory Effects of Occupational Licensing on Driving Instructors in UK

It was not until the introduction of the driving test in 1935 that any serious attempt was made to coordinate the ways in which people learned to drive. Even then however, the state did not see the need for a parallel system to formalise eligibility to teach individuals driving skills so for many years there were no legal controls over the training and qualifications of those who taught driving. The first initiative came from the Motor Schools Association and the Royal Automobile Club (both independent associations formed by driving schools owners) who also in 1935 produced their own independent registers of qualified driving instructors and schools. Each organisation outlined its own version of the basic skills that were needed to join the register. The register of approved driving instructors (ADIs) was finally approved by Parliament in 1964 but remained voluntary until 1970. During that time, at various occasions the state attempted to persuade the industry to formalise the standards and put in controls without success. However, it was not until the driving lessons industry grew substantially that driving instructor training was formalised and membership of the register of approved driving instructors became compulsory. In practice this has meant that any person giving paid instruction in the driving of a motor car whose name is not on the Register is guilty of an offence. As such, the evolution of regulation in the occupation can be understood as a shift from voluntary membership of a register belonging to a professional body to legally enforced state regulation in the form of specific training requirements to practice (as evidenced by one’s membership of the Approved Driving Instructor register or ownership of a trainee license). As we shall show below however, in reality a dual market of fully trained and trainee driving instructors is in operation. More recently, various changes have taken place with regards to requirements for regular periodic assessments that instructors have to undergo as well as proposals to reform the occupation in terms of training requirements to practice. In this study we assess the impact of these proposals on outcome and value-added type of indicators.</p

Occupational Closure and Job Quality: The Case of Occupational Licensing in Britain

The notion of job quality has been at the forefront of academic and policy-debates, best crystallised in the pursuit to create more but also better jobs as a route to economic prosperity. Motivated by the need to better understand how occupational-level structures shape job quality, we derive predictions from the occupational closure literature to explore how occupational licensing—the strongest and fastest growing form of closure—shapes job quality in Britain. Using nationally representative data over several decades, we find that the effects of licensing tend to be confined to jobs in the most stringently licensed occupations, with such jobs having higher pay, lower job insecurity, greater opportunities for skill-use, and higher continuous learning requirements—relative to jobs in similarly-skilled unlicensed occupations. Of particular concern, however, is the finding that jobs in stringently licensed occupations are also characterised by significantly lower task discretion and significantly higher job demands. Overall, our study adds a new dimension to job quality debates by highlighting the role of emergent occupational-level institutional structures in shaping job quality, and further, that despite the overall positive effects closure strategies have, they may come at a cost to certain critical intrinsic dimensions of job quality