Doctors With(out) Borders: Effects of Easing Occupational Licensing for Foreign-Trained Physicians

About one quarter of U.S. physicians trained abroad. Over the 1960s–1970s, more than 30 state medical boards removed citizenship requirements for licensure, creating a large, exogenous policy shift. Using a newly digitized, individual-level dataset of all U.S. physicians and a staggered difference-in-differences design that leverages the quasi-random timing of reforms, this project measures how removing citizenship barriers affected the recruitment, retention, and geographic distribution of foreign-trained physicians. It also examines downstream effects on hospitals, service availability, and public-health outcomes. Results will clarify whether licensing liberalization strengthens medical labor markets, improves access to care, and alters health-sector outcomes across states and hospital types.