Is regulation to blame for the decline in American entrepreneurship?

Nathan Goldschlag and Alexander Tabarrok

Economic Policy, 2018, vol. 33, issue 93, 5-44

Abstract: Mounting evidence suggests that economic dynamism and entrepreneurial activity are declining in the United States. Over the past 30 years, the annual number of new business startups and the pace of job reallocation have declined significantly. We ask whether this decline in dynamism can be explained by federal regulation. We combine measures of dynamism with RegData, a novel dataset leveraging the text of the Code of Federal Regulations to create annual measures of the total quantity of regulation by industry. We find that rising federal regulation cannot explain secular trends in economic dynamism.

JEL-codes: J23 K20 L26 M13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:ecpoli:v:33:y:2018:i:93:p:5-44.

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