Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-18-2019
Abstract
Public choice theory has long been the dominant lens through which economists and other scholars have viewed occupational licensing. According to the public choice account, practitioners favor licensing because they want to reduce competition and drive up their own wages. This essay argues that the public choice account has been overstated, and that it ironically has served to distract from some of the most important harms of licensing, as well as from potential solutions. We emphasize three specific drawbacks of this account. First, it is more dismissive of legitimate threats to public health and safety than the research warrants. Second, it places disproportionate emphasis on those professions for which the justification for licensing seems weakest, rather than on those for which the justification is stronger. Third, it puts an inordinate focus on whether an occupation is licensed, rather than how it is licensed. Judges and policymakers should bear these limitations in mind when evaluating legal challenges or proposed reforms to licensing laws.
Keywords
Occupational licensing, occupational regulation, consumer protection, public choice theory, regulatory theory, administrative law, regulatory design, regulation, law and political economy, state and local goverment.
Publication Title
Administrative Law Review
Repository Citation
Scheffler, Gabriel and Nunn, Ryan, "Occupational Licensing and the Limits of Public Choice Theory" (2019). All Faculty Scholarship. 2072.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2072
Included in
Administrative Law Commons, Antitrust and Trade Regulation Commons, Constitutional Law Commons, Consumer Protection Law Commons, Economics Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Public Law and Legal Theory Commons
Publication Citation
Administrative Law Review Accord (April 18, 2019).