Because the impacts of regulation on operating costs are difficult to quantify, it is often difficult to demonstrate the benefit of regulatory reform to policymakers and voters. In this new working paper, Richard Fullenbaum and Tyler Richards provide evidence that the average rate of regulatory growth drives up operating costs per unit of output by about 3.3 percentage points per year, with the effect of increasing operating costs for businesses by 92 percent over the past 20 years. If all other factors were to remain constant, returning the total volume of regulations to their 1998 levels would reduce operating costs by half and foster substantial economic growth.