The Licensing Racket

[A] hard-hitting debut study… Filled with lucid analysis that cuts through the thicket of legal and economic issues, this is a persuasive critique of a pressing regulatory matter. * Publishers Weekly *A thoughtful exploration of professional licensing in the United States. – Judy Poyer * Library Journal *An unmatched insider’s look at how occupational licensing actually functions and perpetuates itself. A must-read manual for anyone who wants to reform this increasingly broken system. – Jason Furman, former Chair of the Council of Economic AdvisersCaution! Rebecca Haw Allensworth’s exposé of petty and self-interested licensing boards may make your blood boil. This is a powerful call for rebooting how America regulates professional competence. – Philip K. Howard, author of Everyday FreedomImportant and timely. Allensworth weaves storytelling and interdisciplinary research into a deep and compelling explanation of the inequities of licensing and how it creates artificial scarcity in essential services. – Orly Lobel, author of The Equality MachineA major contribution to scholarship and a gripping read. Allensworth shows that licensing boards are much better at keeping people out of professions than they are at protecting the public. Her account of the role that medical boards played in the opioid crisis is especially chilling. – Steven Teles, coauthor of The Captured EconomyWith a muckraker’s tenacity and a legal scholar’s precision, Allensworth exposes the rotten foundations of professional licensure in America: the licensing boards that far too often put doctors, lawyers, and other professionals ahead of public safety and welfare. The Licensing Racket enlightens and enrages in equal measure. – Nicholas Bagley, University of Michigan Law SchoolA well-written, accessible, and valuable contribution to the understanding of occupational licensing, based on four years of in-depth interviews. The Licensing Racket deserves to be widely read. – Morris Kleiner, University of Minnesota

Rebecca Haw Allensworth is David Daniels Allen Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University Law School. Her work appears in the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Review of Books.