We introduce a new time series measure of the extent of federal regulation in the U.S. and use it to investigate the relationship between federal regulation and macroeconomic performance. We find that regulation has statistically and economically significant effects on aggregate output and the...

We introduce a new measure of the extent of federal regulation, the number of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations, and use it to investigate the relationship between federal regulation and macroeconomic performance in the U.S. We find that regulation has statistically and economically...