The passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010 continued a trend toward lengthier and more complex acts of Congress. We use novel metrics of the size, scope, and complexity of acts of Congress to assess Dodd-Frank's place in this trend. Our analysis is...

Recent empirical studies estimating the impact of US federal regulations on domestic business activity have reached seemingly contradictory conclusions. When measuring business activity with traditional measures of entrepreneurship (i.e., firm startups and job formation), some researchers...

In this paper we introduce RegData Australia (RDAU1.0) and present some preliminary and comparative findings using this new panel. RDAU1.0 applies the RegData method to create a unique Australian database that extends from 1997 to 2012. RegData uses text analysis to quantify restrictive clauses...

The federal regulation and state enterprise (“FRASE”) index ranks the 50 states and the District of Columbia according to how federal regulations affect each state's economy. Over the past 80 years, the federal government has increasingly relied on regulations as its primary legal output....

We describe RegData 3.0, a database released by the RegData Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University on August 31, 2017, for the purpose of facilitating third-party usage. We explain the primary features of the database, describe the methodology used to build it, and list the...