Licensing began with medicine and law; now it extends to 20 percent of the U.S. workforce, including hair stylists and auctioneers. In a new book, the legal scholar Rebecca Allensworth calls licensing boards “a thicket of self-dealing and ineptitude” and says they keep bad workers in their jobs and good ones out — while failing to protect the public. <ul><li>SOURCES:<ul><li><a href="https://law.vanderbilt.edu/bio/?pid=rebecca-allensworth">Rebecca Allensworth</a>, professor of law at Vanderbilt University.</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>RESOURCES:<ul><li>"<a href="https://amzn.to/4hDxlMm">The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong</a>" by Rebecca Allensworth (2025).</li><li>"<a href="https://www.nybooks.com/online/2020/07/21/licensed-to-pill/">Licensed to Pill,</a>" by Rebecca Allensworth (The New York Review of Books, 2020).</li><li>"<a href="https://research.upjohn.org/up_press/18/">Licensing Occupations: Ensuring Quality or Restricting Competition?</a>" by Morris Kleiner (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2006).</li><li>"<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjir.12470">How Much of Barrier to Entry is Occupational Licensing?</a>" by Peter Blair and Bobby Chung (British Journal of Industrial Relations, 2019).</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>EXTRAS:<ul><li>"<a href="https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-ozempic-as-magical-as-it-sounds/">Is Ozempic as Magical as It Sounds?</a>" by Freakonomics Radio (2024).</li></ul></li></ul>

Podurama

Home

Trending

Personal

Your Podcasts

New Episodes

My Files

Favourite Episodes

Tags (Folders)

Recently Played

Bookmarks

Followed Playlists

621. Is Professional Licensing a Racket?

Freakonomics Radio

AI Chapters

AI Insights

Reviews