Intelligent Analytics and Modeling Wins SBA Research Grant

We are excited to announce that Intelligent Analytics and Modeling was recently awarded a federal contract from the US Small Business Administration to perform a year long research study on the economic impact of occupational licensing on small businesses. Occupational licensing procedures are governmental regulations that require workers to obtain a credential before practicing a specific profession. While occupational licensing procedures is designed to protect consumers and increase quality of service, academic literature also finds potential negative effects on competition, prices and barriers to entry.

Our study examines these hypotheses, by first creating a unified measure of the opportunity cost for occupational licensing procedures, and then by testing its effects on competition by analyzing business size, density and price distribution across all states, and quality as measured by online user reviews. We then complement this analysis by using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to analyze online Google reviews, collected by our team via API calls, to better understand consumer outcomes. Our study will be published in late 2019.

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Founded in 2018, Intelligent Analytics and Modeling, Inc. is an economics think tank that provides comprehensive policy and impact evaluations, business damage calculations, and expert witness testimony. For further information on our company, or to request a quote for your economic project or business damages consultation, please visit our website at www.iamecon.com or send us an e-mail at info@iamecon.com.