This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Wednesday, December 6,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown.

The supply of various professionals, most notably in health care,

is in a dire state nationwide.

And at the center of that problem sits licensing.

Ed Timmons directs the knee regulatory research center.

We discuss the big moves some states are making at radically reducing the burden of state

licensing for various occupations and ending wholesale various certificate of need requirements

for business.

Careful listeners to the Cato Daily Podcast will recall that we talk about occupational licensing

and that it is sort of, it remains, still an unsung impediment to a great deal of productivity that could be unleashed throughout the U.S. economy.

And in particular states, and states for the most part are the the chief regulators when it comes to occupational licenses and to what extent have you seen some change in that area where have we seen the most change in the

last few years and recognition of this as a problem I think a critical factor was in 2015 when the Obama White House put out a

white paper that summarized what us economists know about the effects of occupational licensing.

After the release of that report I think licensing moved into that critical

realm of non-partisan policy issues.

And since the publication of that report,

I think more and more states are recognizing

that growth in licensing presents a problem and you know

certainly licensing potentially can restrict mobility of workers and that's

the exactly what universal recognition tries to get at.

So universal recognition, what states have adopted that and what are the sort of

...