This paper examines the impact of start-up regulations and institutional quality on the level of new business activity in a panel of 119 countries between 2001 and 2012. We find robust evidence that new business creation is significantly lower in countries with excessive barriers to entry, a...

We investigate whether regulatory growth disproportionately burdens small businesses relative to large businesses. Using panel data from RegData 3.0 and exploiting variation across industries over time, we empirically estimate the relationship between regulatory growth and growth in the number...