Data and Code for: Consumer Protection in an Online World: An Analysis of Occupational Licensing

This repository contains data and code relating to our paper, "Consumer Protection in an Online World: An Analysis of Occupational Licensing". Note that due to confidentially reasons, we are not able to share our main dataset relating to the platform. We are able to share other data we have collected separately from the platform. Specifically, we share data from our nationally representative survey of occupation licensing. <br><br>An abstract of the paper is follows:<br><br> We study the demand and supply implications of occupational licensing using transaction-level data from a large online platform for home improvement services. We find that demand is more responsive to a professional's reviews than to the professional's platform-verified licensing status. We show some evidence that consumers view licenses and reviews as substitutes. We confirm the generality of our findings off the platform in an independent consumer survey. Combining state-level licensing regulation data with platform micro-data, we find that more stringent requirements are associated with less competition, higher prices, and no increase in demand or consumer satisfaction.