WORKING PAPERS

During the 1960s and 1970s, most U.S. states repealed maximum hours laws for female workers in manufacturing and mercantile industries. Using the phased removal of these gender-specific protective laws, we investigate the resulting labor market effects. Our analysis shows that lifting hours restrictions significantly increased the actual workweek length and the likelihood of exceeding initial workweek limits for both female and male workers. We also find a moderate rise in female employment, driven by a decline in the probability of shifting to other targeted industries. In terms of earnings, removing these hours restrictions led to a decrease in hourly wages for male workers and had little impact on women. Taken together, our results imply the initial gender-specific workweek limits may have both hindered women's autonomy in setting working schedules and introduced statistical discrimination based on gender.

Excess administrative expenses impose a strain on the U.S. healthcare system. However, little is known about how these administrative processes affect facilities' provision of medical services. I empirically assess this question by drawing on state laws restricting prior authorization (PA) requirements for substance abuse treatments (SAT) in private health plans. Exploiting the staggered phase-in of state laws, I find that the likelihood of providing low-intensity SAT services increases while the propensity to provide high-intensity SAT services declines. One underlying mechanism is lowering administrative hassles can increase healthcare facilities' treatment capacity: I show the probability of experiencing involuntary medical delays (due to healthcare facilities' capacity constraints) significantly declined. Further, my findings suggest this redirection of healthcare provision is not driven by changes in the composition of patients, local market structure, over-utilization of SAT services, or increased contracts with private insurers. In the meantime, I also document the mortality rate due to alcohol declined significantly by 0.215 percentage points following the prior authorization limit. This paper highlights a novel source of costs associated with healthcare administrative processes: beyond imposing direct paperwork costs, they substantially restrain facilities' treatment capacity and allocation of medical resources. 

Can occupational licensing requirements influence consumer welfare? In this paper, I investigate the extent to which regulating veterinary care shaped a key dimension of agricultural development: livestock productivity. Exploiting the staggered adoption of state-level licensing laws for veterinary care in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, I document the fact that adopting the licensing law led to a significant increase in the density of draft animals (horses, mules, and cattle), proxied by the number of heads per acre. I provide some suggestive evidence for one potential mechanism: during the progressive era, veterinary care regulations mitigated the asymmetric information issue in service, thereby scaling up the demand for high-quality veterinary medicine. My findings emphasize the broader effects of labor market regulation on service quality and provide important implications for ongoing debates regarding the value of occupational licensing. 

The public debate over unemployment insurance (UI) centers on the trade-off between its consumption-smoothing benefits and moral hazard costs, leaving little discussion along many other crucial margins of social welfare. In this paper, I empirically assess whether UI generosity affects consumer welfare at nursing homes. Exploiting the U.S. by-state-year variation in UI benefits, I find a 10% increase in the annual maximum UI generosity is associated with a lower prevalence of urinary tract infections (by 5.6%), as well as a decline in the percentage of residents with pressure ulcer (by 10%, or 0.11 percentage points) among private nursing homes. One underlying mechanism is that by reducing compensating wage differentials for ex-ante unemployment risks, UI benefits serve as a subsidy that enables firms to adjust the input mix (e.g., increasing infection control, personnel-based care, etc.). Meanwhile, although I document that higher UI benefits increase the staffing level of high-wage, high-skilled nurses (by 0.2%),  there are no significant changes in the quality provided by these workers. This additional evidence suggests a decline in workers’ quality-adjusted productivity, aligning with the idea that higher UI benefits can trigger moral hazard in the workplace. Taken together, this paper can shed new insights into the design of optimal UI: Among many costs and benefits, the social benefit derived from preventing patient hazards and infections should be weighed.