About this episode
The episode discusses the complexities and consequences of professional licensing in the workforce with guest Rebecca Haw Allensworth.
Nearly 30 million workers, or roughly one in five workers throughout the country, are required to have a professional license before they can do their jobs. That’s more than twice the number of workers who belong to unions. And it’s almost ten times the number who earn the minimum wage. But in comparison to those other economic arrangements, curiously little attention is given to the process that governs licensing, the perverse outcomes it so often leads to, and the vulnerable workers who are affected by it. Cardiff’s guest on this episode is Vanderbilt law professor Rebecca Haw Allensworth, author of “The Licensing Racket: How we decide who is allowed to work, and Why it goes wrong.” Among Cardiff’s picks for the economics book of the year, it is the product of not just a scholarly understanding of the topic, but of years and years of painstaking reporting, interviewing hundreds of people, and unearthing a variety of frankly shocking anecdotes. She and Cardiff discuss: The legal and institutional design behind the boards that oversee licensing in each state How the desire to protect the already licensed leads board to impose outrageous requirements for new…
People in this episode
Host: Cardiff
Guest: Rebecca Haw Allensworth
Topics covered
- professional licensing
- worker rights
- economic policy
- public safety
- institutional design
Keywords
- licensing
- workers
- public safety
- economic arrangements
- Vanderbilt
- professional licenses
- barriers to entry
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Vanderbilt
Books & works: The Licensing Racket: How we decide who is allowed to work, and Why it goes wrong
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