For more than 40 years, federal regulators have produced economic analysis for some of their most significant rules. As part of this process, the Office of Management and Budget reviews the rules and accompanying analysis from these regulators in an oversight capacity. This policy brief provides an overview of this process and aims to educate policymakers about how this system works so they can get more involved in the regulatory process. It also offers lessons for policymakers looking to build on analytical capabilities in their state or agency.
The Mercatus Center’s RegData database makes it possible not only to measure regulations within a jurisdiction but also to compare regulations between jurisdictions, both national and subnational. In “Census of Regulatory Restrictions,” Kofi Ampaabeng, Patrick McLaughlin, and Thurston Powers use RegData to compare the regulatory landscapes of the United States, Canada, and Australia, as well as their states and provinces. They address the volume of regulations, the complexity of regulations, the industries affected by regulations, and (in the case of the United States) the agencies that issue them.
Although international trade generally benefits the US economy as a whole, opening the economy to global trade will leave some workers who faced increased competition from import worse off in the long term. Do these individuals seek to retrain themselves for employment in the new labor markets? In “Changing Human Capital Choices in the United States: Impact of Trade Exposure,” Patralekha Ukil finds that they do and that female workers retrain at much higher rates than male workers.
