We present new data on the regulation of entry of start-up firms in 85 countries. The data covers the number of … are extremely high in most countries. Countries with heavier regulation of entry have higher corruption and larger … have lighter regulation of entry. The evidence is inconsistent with public interest theories of regulation, but supports …

In a cross-section of countries, government regulation is strongly negatively correlated with social capital. We … document this correlation, and present a model explaining it. In the model, distrust creates public demand for regulation …, while regulation in turn discourages social capital accumulation, leading to multiple equilibria. A key implication of the …

We present new data on the regulation of entry of start-up firms in 75 countries. The data set contains information on … official costs of entry are extremely high in most countries. Countries with heavier regulation of entry have higher corruption … benevolent regulation, but support the (grabbing hand) view that entry regulation benefits politicians and bureaucrats …

We present a model of efficient regulation along the lines of Demsetz (1967). In this model, setting up and running … regulatory institutions takes a fixed cost, and therefore jurisdictions with larger populations affected by a given regulation … legislation and adopt particular laws earlier in their history. We also find that specific types of regulation, including the …

We propose an activity-generating theory of regulation. When courts make errors, tort litigation becomes unpredictable … risk, this type of regulation can raise welfare …

Regulation of economic activity is ubiquitous around the world, yet standard theories predict it should be rather … uncommon. I argue that the ubiquity of regulation is explained not so much by the failure of markets, or by asymmetric … accounts for the ubiquity of regulation, for its growth over time, as well as for the fact that contracts themselves are …

We investigate the regulation of labor markets through employment laws, collective bargaining laws, and social security … generous social security systems. Socialist and French legal origin countries have sharply higher levels of labor regulation …. Heavier regulation of labor is associated with a larger unofficial economy, lower labor force participation, and higher …

During the Progressive Era at the beginning of the 20th century, the United States replaced litigation by regulation as … enforcement strategy between litigation and regulation based on the idea that justice can be subverted with sufficient expenditure … environment of significant inequality of wealth and political power. The switch to regulation can then be seen as an efficient …