Regulating through the Professions: A Perspective on Information Control

Abstract

P ROFESSIONS in the service sector exercise extensive controls over the types of goods and services which can be sold, the individuals and organizations which can sell them, and the type and amount of information publicly disseminated about these services. Professional codes of ethics usually prohibit advertising, limit brand name identification, strongly discourage public evaluation of other professionals' work, and place limitations wherever possible on other public indications of the characteristics, quality, or price of the services provided. Members of the professions sharply distinguish between commercial exchanges and their own professional services in which public trust resides with standards of performance to be determined autonomously by the profession.' In this situation the mechanisms of choice and control are assigned primarily to the profession rather than to the consumer, and in the extreme case the consumer has little or no information concerning the differential characteristics of the individuals supplying the services or the market prices for such services. This assignment of control is defended on the grounds that many individuals cannot cope successfully with a commercial environment, and that severe restraints are necessary on the dissemination of information to prevent unscrupulous suppliers of services from misleading such individuals. The undesirable consequences associated with such "commercial"