Q:What do August temperatures in DC have in common with California’s state regulatory code?
A: They’re both stifling.
It’s been a busy week at Mercatus, as we launched the latest update to our State Regulatory Snapshot series. These snapshots offer insight into each state’s regulatory code and its impact on the state’s economy. The project consists of a detailed breakdown for each state and includes which industries are most regulated in a given state and ideas for reform. As my bad joke implied, California is the most regulated state, followed by New York and New Jersey, while Idaho, South Dakota and North Dakota are the least regulated states.
The snapshots also offer insight into the impact that federal regulation has on each state, on top of the state’s own regulatory code. For example, in my home state of Ohio, the growth of federal regulation between 1997 and 2015 is associated with over 300,000 people living in poverty and more than 4,000 jobs lost annually.
Co-author of the study Patrick McLaughlin wrote a piece at Discourse Magazine contextualizing some of the studies findings shows how an overload of regulations hampers economic prosperity.
The good news is that states that have reduced their outdated, unnecessary or excessive regulations by at least 5% in recent years have enjoyed substantially stronger economic growth.
Patrick and his co-author Dustin Chambers offer a couple of recommendations for policymakers interested in encouraging economic growth. The first is creating a regulatory budget, which would place a cap on the number of regulations a state can have at one time. The second is setting a regulatory sunset requirement that all regulations would be removed after a period of time, unless explicitly removed by the legislature.
You can explore the snapshots online, using the interactive map to learn more about a specific state.
Kate De Lanoy Director of Communications
Mercatus Center at George Mason University
The Treasury Department is trying to preempt state fair access laws protecting bank customers in legal but controversial industries. Brian Knight details his skepticism on the Department’s standing in three parts: part 1, part 2, and
part 3.
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