It has been a fast-paced few weeks at the Knee Regulatory Research Center. We attended conferences around the U.S., met with legislators, and held our annual summer conference- this year with the theme of Abundance and Regulation.
During all this, we did take a moment to celebrate our team with the inaugural Bendies Awards, our joke award show for employees. From “Most Likely to Follow Up with an Email” to “Most Likely to Show Up Late with a Pumpkin Spice Latte,” our crew had a night of laughs and memories.
One of the awards was serious. We have been considering this for a long time and have decided to start a lifetime achievement award for work in regulation research and outreach. This award will not be annual; instead, it will only be given when a person has truly earned the honor through a career of hard work and dedication to making the world a better, more prosperous place through regulatory reform.
It only makes sense that our first-ever lifetime achievement award goes to the man we are naming it after. We are proud to announce that the 2026 Morris Kleiner Lifetime Achievement in Regulatory Research Award goes Dr. Morris Kleiner!
The Knee Center would not exist without Morris, because without his decades of dedicated research on the importance of licensing as a labor market institution, and its subsequent effects on safety, quality, cost, and access, we would still be in the black box of regulations we take for granted. Morris has inspired dozens of authors, policymakers, and academics around the world. All of us here at the Knee Center can make change in the world because Morris set the foundation for why these topics were important. Moving forward and upward, Morris still has quite a few projects up his sleeve. His next undertaking will be gauging the pervasiveness of licensing in countries around the world.
As a celebration of Morris and his career, our Student Knee Fellow, Sara Ratley, interviewed Morris during his recent summer stay with the Knee Center:
INTERVIEW WITH MORRIS KLEINER
[Sara]: Do you want to start by telling me a little bit about yourself, and your background?
[Morris]: Well, I went to school at Bradley University for my undergrad and I majored in Economics. And then I was in the military, I was in the Army. I was in the infantry and was a sergeant. My specialty was the stinger missile, every once in a while, that makes the headlines. Then I came back and I was in the national guard, and then I went to the University of Illinois, graduate program in industrial relations because I thought I wanted to work in that area. And then became fascinated in labor economics classes, I went on to get a PhD.
[Sara]: Yeah, why not?
[Morris]: Why not, I’m here anyway. And I had all this GI Bill stuff, so I wanted to use that up. It was sunk cost fallacy.
[Sara]: So how did you get into working on licensing topics?
[Morris]: I was working in the federal government. I was at my first position
after I finished my PhD at the University of Kansas, at Lawrence. And I got a fellowship
at the Brookings Institution which is in Washington D.C. And then I was signed
to the department of labor, and they asked me since I was the lowest person on
the list, I was the rookie. They assigned me to the topic of doing occupational
licensing. Because no one else wanted to do it. So, I started working on the topic
and became fascinated. And also, the federal trade commission was interested, and
that was also in D.C.
And I just
sort of, started working on it and saw a lot of really interesting issues. Both
in terms of what effects it might have in the labor market, what effects it would
have on employment, and really started to do deep dives. I was also doing work
on industrial relations at the time, so I was sort of doing one paper on industrial
relations and then a paper on licensing. And then I sort of switched over licensing
only, in about the 1990s. Almost 2000. Exclusively started working on occupational
licensing.
[Sara]: Everything you say I’m like wow, wow, wow, you have a crazy background. Are you currently working on anything?
[Morris]: Yeah, I am working on a wide variety of topics, sort of analyzing occupational licensing around the world. And seeing the fact that licensing really is very pervasive around the world. From countries like Denmark, where only 15 percent of workforce requires permission from government in order to work. To countries like India, where about 44 percent of all workers require permission from government in order to do their job. So, there’s huge variance, and looking at those issues, issues of occupational licensing and efficiency, and looking at occupational licensing of uber drivers. In New York they are required to have a full taxi license, which takes a long time. So, we are doing a quasi-random assignment there to see if there are any quality effects of licensing. Some of the work I’m doing at the Knee Center, on what effect licensing has had on income inequality.
[Sara]: Oh nice, that seems very interesting. And then is there anything that you’re proud of? Like specifically proud of such as a publication?
[Morris]: Yeah, I think it’s like picking your favorite kid. It’s hard to pick one thing. I think just the whole area of looking at the effects of licensing on wages, employment and quality. Just the whole package of examining those issues, that licensing reduces employment, it raises wages and has almost no effect on quality, has been sort of the key.
[Interviewer]: This is kind of the same question, but, what was your biggest win throughout your career?
[Morris]: Well, I testified both U.S. House and U.S. Senate. I’ve given talks to the administration, worked very closely with the council of economic advisors. I think some of the work I did in Arizona, which resulted in universal reciprocity with Governor Ducey. In Arizona that was the first stage to introduce reciprocity, so anyone who moves to Arizona they recognize out of state licenses. And that was a big win. I talked with a number of people on his staff, there was a lot going on in occupational licensing during the last three administrations. So there has been a lot that had taken place during the Obama administration, quite a bit under Trump 1, Biden was very interested, and Trump is now also interested. So it’s been a bipartisan issue.
[Sara]: And then, this is my last question I promise, what big question do you think is still left unanswered?
[Morris]: Well, I think some of the issues dealing with ex-offenders, what effect does licensing, because a lot of people who are ex-offenders, try to get back into the workforce and because they have had run-ins with the law they can’t find a job, and they can’t find a job in the 25 percent of the workforce and they require permission from government in order to work. So those are real hardships for those folks. And what effects do those licensing have on unemployment? Does it keep people out? What are the effects on reducing employment for workings who are trying to get into the occupations that are regulated?
[Sara]: And was there anything else you wanted to leave me with?
[Morris]: I think that this is a really important area, it’s been the fastest growing labor market institution in the U.S. Its pervasive around the world, you can’t go to a country where licensing is not present. It has different effects in different countries, its more or less pervasive in some countries than others. But in the U.S., we have data and we’ve done more work to examine the effects of licensing than any other country.