Regulatory policy

Lane Kenworthy, The Good Society
April 2025

Government regulations aim to improve health, safety, choice, product quality, affordability, and other outcomes. They do so by specifying things that people and organizations must do and things they must not do.

Government regulatory activity often is separated into two types. Economic regulation consists of rules governing prices, output, service, and entry in a sector of the economy. In the United States this type of regulation began in the late 1800s and is supervised by industry-specific agencies such as the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Interstate Commerce Commission. Social regulation, which began in force in the late 1960s, aims to promote consumer and worker security, safety, and health along with environmental protection. Its governing agencies include the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Consumer Products Safety Commission.

There are many regulations — the US Code of Federal Regulations runs to nearly 200,000 pages.1 Here are some examples2:

  • “Children under 14 years of age may not be employed in non-agricultural occupations covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Permissible employment for such children is limited to work that is exempt from the FLSA (such as delivering newspapers to the consumer and acting). Children may also perform work not covered by the FLSA such as completing minor chores around private homes or casual baby-sitting.”
  • To perform cosmetology services for a fee in California, a person must have graduated from a board-approved school with at least 1,000 hours of training and passed a state license exam.
  • A company that knowingly labels or sells a product as “organic” when the product isn’t in accordance with the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 is subject to a fine of up to $22,000.
  • Credit card companies must provide 45 days notice to cardholders before increasing the interest rate they charge or introducing other significant changes to their terms.
  • In large urban areas, “control transmitter locations must be at least 1 mile from the main transmitter locations of all TV stations transmitting on TV channels separated by 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, or 8 TV channels from the TV channel containing the frequencies on which the control station will transmit. This requirement is intended to reduce the likelihood of intermodulation interference.”
  • Businesses with more that 50 employees, public agencies, and schools must permit employees 12 weeks of job-protected, unpaid leave per year for family and medical reasons such as having a child or caring for a family member.
  • Restaurants with 20 or more locations (chains) must provide calorie information for each item on their menu or face a fine.
  • Health insurers can’t deny a person coverage on the basis of the person having a preexisting medical condition (cancer, back pain).
  • Automakers’ fleet of passenger cars and light trucks must have an average fuel economy of no less than 50.4 miles per gallon.
  • US citizens can request information from any federal government agency. “Federal agencies are required to disclose any information requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) unless it falls under one of nine exemptions which protect interests such as personal privacy, national security, and law enforcement.”

A federal government agency, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), adds up the estimated benefits and costs of any new regulatory rule in the United States that is projected to have a significant financial impact. It calculations suggest that in most instances the benefits outweigh the costs. Skeptics, however, contend that the benefit estimates are too high.3

Is regulation the only way to achieve desired outcomes? Is it the best way? What are some examples of regulatory successes? Of regulatory failures? Where do we need more regulation? How can we improve regulatory policy?

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REGULATION AND OTHER STRATEGIES

For some of the outcomes regulation aims to achieve, such as economic security and fairness, there are alternative strategies. One way to see this is by comparing across countries, as in figure 1. The horizontal axis in the chart shows a measure of overall government regulation in the rich longstanding-democratic nations. It combines regulations on starting up and operating a business, on hiring and firing and work conditions, on exporting and importing, on investment, and on finance.4 The vertical axis shows government spending.

Figure 1. Government regulation and government spending
2005-2019. Government regulation: scale of 0 to 100. Average score for five types of regulation: business (rules on establishing and operating an enterprise, such as licensing requirements and safety rules), labor (rules and restrictions on hiring, firing, work hours, and work conditions), trade (tariffs, quotas, and other obstacles to exports and imports), investment (restrictions on movement of capital), and finance (regulation of equity markets and other financial markets). Data source: Heritage Foundation, heritage.org/index. Government spending: share of GDP. Data source: OECD Data Explorer, “Public finance main indicators — Government at a glance.” “Asl” is Australia; “Aus” is Austria.

There is very little correlation between these two types of government strategy. Some countries, such as France, Italy, and Portugal, are comparatively high on both regulation and public expenditures. And some, such as Switzerland, the United States, and Australia, are comparatively low on both. But quite a few nations favor one strategy much more than the other.

Denmark, in the upper-left corner of the graph, is a particularly striking case. It has the least regulation among the 21 countries and very high public spending. In this approach, sometimes referred to as “flexicurity” — flexibility with security — government expenditures fund an array of programs that enhance economic security, opportunity, and fairness. Government also sets basic standards for worker and consumer protections, but for the most part it doesn’t tell economic actors how to meet those standards. The aim is to maximize individuals’ opportunities and to provide security for those who fail while impinging as little as possible on competition and flexibility.

WHY REGULATION MIGHT NOT SUCCEED

Regulation sometimes does more harm than good. One example is when it achieves its immediate aim but discourages some other beneficial activity. Think of a regulation that forbids use of a chemical that has a small harmful effect on workers’ health. If the regulation causes a large reduction in production, many people may end up poorer, and possibly less healthy, than in the absence of the regulation. Other regulations may reduce innovation. These are changes in behavior that indirectly offset the benefit of the regulation.

Regulations also can cause actors to change their behavior in a way that directly offsets the regulation’s impact. Suppose policymakers try to improve automobile safety by imposing speed limits for drivers and airbags and seat belts for car manufacturers. These surely would help reduce the number of accidents and the number of deaths per accident. But they might lead drivers to be less concerned about the potential for an accident and thereby driver more recklessly, which in turn could increase accidents and deaths.

Another potential problem is that existing firms will try to shape regulations to their benefit, at the expense of existing or potential competitors. When government proposes to regulate a particular product or sector of the economy, companies initially tend to oppose the effort. But if it becomes clear that some new regulation is going to be enacted, these firms may shift their strategy to one of ensuring that the regulation imposes barriers to entry for potential startups, such as product standards or licensing requirements.5

REGULATORY SUCCESSES

Government regulations have contributed to longer life, higher living standards, and other good outcomes. Here are just a few of the many examples.

Worker safety

Regulation to reduce workplace accidents, injuries, and deaths has a lengthy history. “In the 1890s, the annual death rate for trainmen was an astonishing 852 per 100,000, almost one percent a year. The carnage was reduced when an 1893 law mandated the use of air brakes and automatic couplers in all freight trains, the first federal law intended to improve workplace safety. The safeguards spread to other occupations in the early decades of the 20th century, the Progressive Era. They were the result of agitation by reformers, labor unions, and muckraking journalists and novelists like Upton Sinclair. The most effective reform was a simple change in the law brought over from Europe: employers’ liability and workmen’s compensation. Previously, injured workers or their survivors had to sue for compensation, usually unsuccessfully. Now, employers were required to compensate them at a fixed rate. The change appealed to management as much as to workers, since it made their costs more predictable and the workers more cooperative. Most important, it yoked the interests of management and labor: both had a stake in making workplaces safer, as did the insurers and government agencies that underwrote the compensation. Companies set up safety committees and safety departments, hired safety engineers, and implemented many protections, sometimes out of economic or humanitarian motives, sometimes as a response to public shaming after a well-publicized disaster, often under the duress of lawsuits and government regulations.”6

Workplace deaths decreased from 62 per 100,000 American workers in a typical year in the early 1900s to just 4 per 100,000 in the 2010s.7

Cigarette smoking

Scientists have known since the middle of the twentieth century that smoking is bad for health. The US government officially reached this conclusion in 1964, with publication of a report by the Surgeon General. In 1965 a new regulation required cigarette packages to have a health warning. Cigarette advertising was banned on television and radio in 1971, on billboards in 1999, and in additional venues and places in 2009. Rules prohibiting smoking in public places, in government buildings, and on airlines began in the 1970s. Many states and localities have banned smoking in private indoor areas such as restaurants and bars. These regulations, in concert with public awareness campaigns and increased taxes on cigarettes, have resulted in a reduction in cigarette smoking from about 44% of American adults in 1960 to 11% by the early 2020s.8

Deaths from lung cancer in the United States have decreased massively in recent decades.9

Lead in gasoline

Use of leaded gasoline in cars rose sharply from the late 1930s through the early 1970s. Exposure to lead during childhood, via car emissions or old paint, is associated with lower cognitive ability, weaker aggression and impulse control, increased likelihood of attention deficit disorder, and greater likelihood of being arrested for violent crime in adulthood.10

In the mid-1970s, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) required gas stations to offer unleaded gas. It then steadily reduced the amount of lead permitted in leaded gas before banning it outright in the mid-1990s. Some research suggests this played a major role in the decline in violent crime beginning around 1993.11

Minimum wage

In many of the rich democratic nations, labor unions have been strong enough to ensure a decent wage floor for many or most workers. In countries where unions are weaker, and where there are no collective bargaining provisions that extend union-negotiated contracts to nonunion firms or sectors, a statutory minimum wage can serve as a helpful substitute.

A minimum wage typically will apply to a relatively small number of people. In the United States, for example, the federal minimum wage applies directly to around 2% of workers, and the effects of increasing it tend to fade out by around the 20th percentile of the wage ladder. A way to address this problem is via sector-specific or occupation-specific minimum wages. This enables policy makers to directly affect the wages of a much larger share of the workforce. Australia illustrates how this can work. Each year a Fair Work Commission sets minimum wages for more than 100 different sectors and occupations, from “Aboriginal Controlled Health Services” to “Wool Storage, Sampling, and Testing,” as well as for various pay grades within these categories. These minimum wages (“wage awards”) are based on characteristics of the work and required skills. They directly determine the pay of about 20% of Australian employees, and indirectly of many more.12

The chief worry about a rising minimum wage is that it may reduce employment. However, the best available evidence suggests that modest increases in the statutory minimum in the past haven’t done so.13

REGULATORY FAILURES

In some instances, regulation has been less successful.

Airlines

Between 1938 and 1978, air transportation in the United States was heavily regulated by the federal government through the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). The board regulated entry into the business, determined which routes existing airlines could serve, and dictated fares for those routes. To maximize consumer satisfaction, the CAB attempted to ensure that as many towns as possible were served and that fare prices did not rise too high. Critics contended that by minimizing competition, industry regulation eliminated incentives for cost reduction, resulting in excessively high prices for consumers.

In 1978 the critics, led by Alfred Kahn, then head of the CAB, succeeded in deregulating the airline industry. Entry, route, and price restrictions were abandoned. Productivity improved, due in part to the creation of “hub-and-spoke” routes and the airlines’ ability to adjust fares to maximize the number of seats filled per flight. This, coupled with an increase in competition, has resulted in a large reduction in the cost of air travel, which in turn has enabled a large increase in the number of people who have access to it.14

Pollution reduction and workplace safety

Regulators have frequently tried to achieve pollution reduction and workplace safety, among other goals, via regulatory commands. This consists of requiring firms to adopt the “best available technology” for eliminating particular types of pollution or workplace hazards. This approach has weaknesses.15 The regulatory standards tend to apply only to new products or factories, thereby encouraging overuse of old technologies and plants that are both less efficient and more harmful. This strategy offers no incentive for further reduction in pollution or workplace hazards below the required level. Once the standard has been met, there is no inducement for continued improvement. Firms are thus discouraged from researching better mechanisms for pollution control and worker safety; knowing they will soon be forced to adopt the new technologies, they may prefer to stick with the old ones they may already have in place. The command approach is also difficult and costly to devise and enforce. It requires detailed knowledge by administrators about the benefits and costs of particular technologies and extensive inspection to ensure compliance. And the command strategy encourages business to fight new regulatory measures as hard as it can. Perversely, the stringency of proposed regulations can thereby lead to underregulation.

In some circumstances, a more effective approach will use incentives rather than dictates.16 Regulatory goals can be better achieved, at less cost, by adopting measures that permit greater flexibility while still constraining business to conform to the desired pattern of behavior. An example is a market in pollution permits — an emissions trading program.17 Companies emitting harmful substances into the air or water have to buy a permit allowing them to do so. Policymakers decide the overall quantity of pollution to allow, and a corresponding number of permits are sold. Any company wishing to begin emitting pollutants, or to increase its level, purchases the necessary quantity of permits from another company that is able and willing to reduce its emissions. The system provides a forceful incentive to reduce pollution emissions; firms that do so will profit by selling their permits. Government can reduce the overall quantity of allowable emissions whenever it desires by buying back and retiring the relevant quantity of permits. Conservation groups can also purchase permits in order to reduce pollution.

The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments created an emissions trading program to deal with sulfur dioxide emissions, which cause acid rain. For pesticides and other toxic substances, taxes can help discourage use by firms. In the area of workplace safety, the chief concern of regulators in this approach is companies’ results in preventing injuries and deaths, rather than their compliance with specified standards. Taxing or penalizing injuries and deaths is the logical solution. This gives firms flexibility to choose the most effective means of compliance.

These sorts of incentives should be only part of an overall social regulatory strategy. The most dangerous toxic emissions and substances should be banned outright. Regulators need to be sure polluters don’t congregate too heavily in a single area. And dangers to workers from harmful substances (such as asbestos or vinyl chloride) have to be prevented through technology standards, because the effects tend to appear long after the causes and are often difficult to judge.

Housing

Housing is the largest single expense for most people. In cities, most people live in rental housing. In the most attractive cities — those with abundant jobs, restaurants, entertainment, and other attractive features — rent can be particularly pricey. In Manhattan, average rent as of the late 2010s was about $5.50 per square foot. For a 750-square-foot apartment, that means an average rental payment amounts to nearly $50,000 per year. Even in a city with lots of good-paying jobs, for many people that will be a stretch. Some attractive cities are much less expensive. In Berlin, average rent was only $1.00 per square foot, which means that same 750-square-foot apartment costs only $9,000 a year.

The core reason why rental housing is so expensive in the some cities is straightforward: demand exceeds supply, which drives up the price.

Why doesn’t the supply of rental units increase to match demand? A common cause is zoning regulations and historic preservation designations that make it difficult to build new rental housing. Beginning in 1916 and particularly since around 1970, many American cities and suburbs have adopted rules that limit building height, restrict population density, specify minimum lot sizes or setbacks, require a certain number of off-street parking spaces, limit “mixed use” residential and commercial units, or mandate community input on new building proposals. In many cities a significant portion of the land available for housing is specifically reserved for single-family homes. In 1965, New York City formed a Landmarks Preservation Commission to create historic districts in which new construction is very difficult. A 1973 Supreme Court ruling in California requires all major new construction to undergo a (frequently lengthy) environmental impact review.

Many housing regulations originally were enacted with an aim to protect health and the environment, by avoiding overcrowding and by keeping manufacturing plants away from residential homes. Current homeowners and renters tend to like the regulations not only for these reasons but also because they protect the view and the ambience. They keep the feel of a city at what Jane Jacobs called “human scale.”18 Existing homeowners and landlords also benefit from the rising value of residential properties that results from obstacles to additional housing supply.

But the result of these impediments is that the supply of housing is far less than the demand, which pushes up the price.19 What’s needed is to relax the regulations and historical preservation rules that stifle the construction of additional rental units.20

Will the price of rental housing really decrease when the supply of overall housing increases? After all, if the new construction is priced at average or above-average market rates, it may attract affluent families to move in, bringing more amenities to the neighborhood, which might signal to landlords that they can raise rents. This is an understandable worry, but research suggests it’s largely unfounded. A rise in housing supply tends to cause a decrease in its price — in practice, not just in theory.21 A variety of recent studies examine what happens when there is an expansion in market-rate (market priced) housing in some cities or areas but not in others. In places where there is an expansion, rental housing tends to become more affordable even for people with low incomes.22

Job protection

In theory, labor markets are free markets. Firms can hire whoever they prefer, and workers can sell their labor to whoever they like. In practice, employers often have greater leverage, because the number of people looking for work is larger than the number of job openings. How can government help? One way is with job protection regulations — restrictions on firms’ ability to fire employees. All rich democratic nations have such restrictions, but they vary in scope and degree. Some impose only minimal hurdles on firms; others make it very difficult for them to reduce their labor force, even when economic conditions get bad.

While well-intentioned, stiff job protection regulations can have perverse effects. The more difficult it is lay off employees, the more likely firms are to hesitate before hiring them. This is part of the reason why employment rates have tended to be higher in countries with modest job protection regulations, such as Denmark and the other Nordic nations, than in countries such as Italy, Spain, and France, where it is much harder for firms to fire workers.23

Occupational licensing

Licensing, credentialing, and certification requirements for occupations or particular types of businesses can be helpful. They ensure that minimal standards of expertise or quality are met. However, it’s easy to go too far with licensing requirements, needlessly reducing supply and/or dampening competition. In the United States that arguably has been the case in medical care, legal services, education, taxi transportation, hairdressing, and more.24

Vaccine approval

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the regulatory agency in the United States that approves new drugs and vaccines. There is reason to think it tends to be excessively conservative in its approval process. As Alex Tabarrok puts it, “The FDA has an incentive to delay the introduction of new drugs because approving a bad drug has more severe consequences for the FDA than does failing to approve a good drug. In the former case at least some victims are identifiable and the New York Times writes stories about them and how they died because the FDA failed. In the latter case, when the FDA fails to approve a good drug, people die but the bodies are buried in an invisible graveyard.”25

The reason for this approach is both historical and driven by policy constraints: “The FDA’s current approach to drug approval was shaped by a tragedy in Europe, where the drug thalidomide, meant to treat morning sickness, caused birth defects and deaths in perhaps tens of thousands of babies in the 1950s. Largely in response, Congress passed legislation in 1962 that raised barriers to bringing new drugs to market. Thereafter, the FDA was charged with ensuring not only that a new drug was safe, but also that it was effective. And Congress eliminated the time constraint that had forced the FDA to move expeditiously on new drugs. By about 1980, new drugs needed an average of 10 years to gain approval.”26

The anthrax poisonings following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack led to a partial move back in the direction of speed: “The Project BioShield Act of 2004 was meant ‘to provide protections and countermeasures against chemical, radiological, or nuclear agents.’ Among other things, the act ‘allowed FDA to authorize formally unapproved products for emergency use against a threat to public health and safety (subject to a declaration of emergency by [the Department of Health and Human Services])’.”27

This emergency-use provision proved crucial in reducing the time it took to deliver a new vaccine during the Covid-19 pandemic. Even then, however, the review process likely moved less rapidly than it could have.28

WHERE MORE REGULATION WOULD HELP

Here are few cases where Americans probably would benefit from additional regulation.

Finance

Regulation of finance is vital, perhaps more than for any other sector of the economy. As one observer puts it: “Treating the financial system in the same way as, say, retailing does not make sense. No other industry has the capacity to create such widespread economic and social damage.”29

One important step is to require financial companies to maintain fairly large capital cushions. Having enough money on hand as a share of total loans reduces the likelihood a firm will end up insolvent in the event that a large number of its loans go bad in a short period of time. Since the passage of Dodd-Frank in 2010, the Federal Reserve has conducted periodic “stress tests” on the largest banks and other financial institutions, including verification that they have adequate capital on hand. In addition, the Basel III accord (reached in 2010) boosted capital requirements beginning in 2019.

Should we prohibit commercial banks from engaging in investment banking? America’s Glass-Steagall law did so from 1933 to 1999. The “Volcker Rule” in the Dodd-Frank Act goes part of the way: it prohibits banks from engaging in speculative trading activities — buying or selling securities, derivatives, commodity futures, or options. The jury is still out on the merits of this kind of restriction on banks. Alan Blinder, for one, has expressed skepticism: “Think about the travails of Bank of America, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, and even Citi…. They did not come — or did not mostly come — from investment banking activities. Rather, they came from the dangerous mix of high leverage with disgraceful lending practices, precisely what has been getting banks into trouble for centuries. Or consider the five giant investment banks prior to the crisis: Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. They were not creatures of Gramm-Leach-Bliley [GLB, the 1999 reform that did away with Glass-Steagall]. Merrill did own a large savings bank. But Merrill Lynch Bank predated GLB by many years, was explicitly allowed under Glass-Steagall, and had virtually nothing to do with Merrill’s problems. Nor would Glass-Steagall strictures have prevented any of the shenanigans at Bear Stearns, AIG, Countrywide, and the rest.”30

A key lesson from the 2008-09 financial crisis is the importance of regulating the so-called shadow banking sector. The shadow banking system is “a complex latticework of financial institutions and capital markets that are heavily involved in various aspects of borrowing and lending. There is no agreed-upon definition of the shadow banking system, but the institutions involved on the eve of the 2008-09 crisis included nonbank loan originators; the two government-sponsored housing agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; other so-called private-label securitizers; the giant investment banks (who were often securitizers, too); structured investment vehicles; a variety of finance companies (some of which specialized in housing finance); hedge funds, private equity funds, and other asset managers; and thousands of mutual, pension, and other sorts of investment funds. The markets involved included those for mortgage-backed securities (MBS), other asset-backed securities (ABS), commercial paper (CP), repurchase agreements (‘repos’), and a bewildering variety of derivatives, including the notorious collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and the ill-fated credit default swaps (CDS).”31 The Dodd-Frank Act authorizes the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate derivative trading. The aim is to identify risks in these trades and take action to prevent them from triggering severe financial instability. The Act also requires hedge funds to register with the SEC and to provide the agency with information about their assets and trades so the SEC can assess their risk.

Social media and smartphones

The first smartphone, the iPhone, came out in 2007. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram emerged over the ensuing five years. A variety of scholars have found that there has been a significant rise among US teens in anxiety, depression, unhappiness, self-harm, and suicide, and that the timing of these shifts matches that of the technology.32 One prominent proposal for how to help features a minimum age of 16 to open a social media account and a ban on possession of a smartphone in elementary and middle school.33

Junk food

Obesity is one of America’s chief social problems. People with obesity tend to earn less and are more likely to be depressed. They are at greater risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and some types of cancer, and they tend to die younger. The monetary cost of obesity is estimated to be 1% to 5% of our GDP. The share of adult Americans who are obese has increased from 15% around 1980 to more than 40% in recent years.34

The cause is consumption of more calories. Particularly problematic are ultra-processed foods, which are tasty, addictive, not very filling, and high in calories. We’ve made some effort to address this via greater availability of healthy food and enhanced access to information (such as calorie labeling), but these don’t seem to have much impact. Ozempic-type drugs might be a solution, but we don’t yet know whether people who lose weight via this route can sustain it.35

Another option is regulation. We could ban ultra-processed foods. The best-known proposal in this vein was Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s unsuccessful bid to ban the sale of sugared drinks in containers of 32 ounces or more in New York City. Others recommend limiting or banning fast-food restaurants in particular areas. In a country with a strong tradition and culture of individual liberty, this approach is, not surprisingly, quite controversial.

IMPROVING REGULATORY POLICY

There is no simple formula policymakers can use to determine whether a particular economic or social objective is best achieved via regulation, competition, information, taxing, spending, public ownership, a combination of these strategies, or some other means. Nor is there an easy way to determine whether a regulation will be most effective if constructed as a command, as an outcome goal, as a financial incentive, or something else. The best approach is to look around to identify what seems to be best practice, to consider any and all relevant evidence, and then to make a reasoned choice.

Once established, regulatory policy should move forward like any other type of government policy — mostly incrementally, by trial and error, with extensive monitoring, analysis, and reconsideration.36

One aim should be to streamline, simplify, or eliminate existing regulations where doing so won’t reduce benefits relative to costs.37 That may be more idealistic than realistic. In practice, existing policies may get scrutinized only occasionally. Still, we should aim to do as well as possible. Tyler Cowen suggests a second-best approach for reducing regulations: “My favorite deregulatory tactic, and one which is relatively effective, is simply to be slow to regulate new sectors of the economy. Thanks to economic growth and innovation, there will always some important yet less regulated sectors of the economy. Those particular forbearances won’t last forever, but over time, other new and less regulated sectors will arise to take their place…. In the early stages of a new sector, there might appear to be insufficient government regulation. But this less regulated period can be especially useful for sorting out exactly how these sectors will (and will not) work and contribute to the overall economy…. A lot of regulation is irreversible. So looking for partial victories, and preventing or delaying new regulation, is the way to go.”38

  1. Regulatory Studies Center, George Washington University, “Reg stats.” ↩︎
  2. Child labor: US Department of Labor, “Fact Sheet #43: Child Labor Provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for Nonagricultural Occupations. Cosmetology licensing requirements: California Board of Barbering and Cosmetology, “BarberCosmo.” Organic products: Code of Federal Regulations, Title 7: Agriculture, section 3.91, revised as of 2024. Credit cards: Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act. Control transmitters: Code of Federal Regulations, Title 47: Telecommunication, section 22.625, revised as of 2024. Family and medical leave: Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. Restaurant calorie posting: Food and Drug Administration, “Menu Labeling Requirements.” Health insurers and preexisting conditions: Affordable Care Act. Auto fuel economy: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “Corporate Average Fuel Economy.” Freedom of information: FOIA.gov, “What is the FOIA?” ↩︎
  3. Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, “2010 Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations and Unfunded Mandates on State, Local, and Tribal Entities,” 2010; Susan E. Dudley and Jerry Brito, Regulation: A Primer, 2nd edition, George Mason University Mercatus Center and George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, 2012; Justin Fox, “Is Regulation a Drag on the Economy? Depends on Who You Ask,” Bloomberg, 2024. ↩︎
  4. Data from the Fraser Institute on trade regulations, credit market regulations, labor regulations, business regulations, and regulations on entering markets and competing yield a similar measure. ↩︎
  5. George J. Stigler, “The Theory of Economic Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science, 1971; Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979, ch. 7. ↩︎
  6. Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now, Penguin, 2018, p. 186. ↩︎
  7. Lane Kenworthy, “Job Quality,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  8. Lane Kenworthy, “Weight Moderation,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  9. Our World in Data, “Lung Cancer Death Rates, United States,” using data from the World Health Organization (WHO) Mortality Database. ↩︎
  10. Christopher Muller, Robert J. Sampson, and Alix S. Winter, “Environmental Inequality: The Social Causes and Consequences of Lead Exposure,” Annual Review of Sociology, 2018. ↩︎
  11. Lane Kenworthy, “Safety,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  12. Lane Kenworthy, “How to Ensure Rising Incomes When Labor Unions Are Weak,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  13. Kenworthy, “How to Ensure Rising Incomes When Labor Unions Are Weak.” ↩︎
  14. Derek Thompson, “How Airline Ticket Prices Fell 50 Percent in 30 Years (and Why Nobody Noticed),” The Atlantic, 2013. ↩︎
  15. Charles L. Schultze, The Public Use of Private Interest, Brookings Institution. 1977. ↩︎
  16. Schultze, The Public Use of Private Interest; Alan S. Blinder, Hard Heads, Soft Hearts: Tough-Minded Economics for a Just Society, Addison-Wesley, 1987, ch. 5; B.A. Ackerman and R.B. Stewart, “Reforming Environmental Law: The Democratic Case for Market Incentives, Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, 1988; R.B. Stewart, “Controlling Environmental Risks through Economic Incentives,” Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, 1988; Cass R. Sunstein, Simpler: the Future of Government, Simon and Schuster, 2013. ↩︎
  17. Ackerman and Stewart, “Reforming Environmental Law.” ↩︎
  18. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Random House, 1961. ↩︎
  19. Ryan Avent, The Gated City, Amazon Digital Services, 2011; Edward L. Glaeser, Triumph of the City, Penguin, 2012; Matthew Yglesias, The Rent Is Too Damn High, Simon and Schuster, 2012; Emily Badger, “What Happened to the American Boomtown?” New York Times, 2017; Peter Ganong and Daniel W. Shoag, “Why Has Regional Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined?,” Journal of Urban Economics, 2017; Vicki Been, Ingrid Gould Ellen, and Katherine O’Regan, “Supply Skepticism: Housing Supply and Affordability,” Furman Center, New York University, 2018; Kerry Cavanaugh, “California May Get Rid of Single-Family Zoning,” Los Angeles Times, 2019; Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti, “Housing Constraints and Spatial Misallocation,” American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2019; Conor Dougherty, Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America, Penguin, 2020; Edward L. Glaeser, “The Closing of the Urban Frontier.” Cityscape, 2020; Manville, Monkkonen, and Lens 2020; Matthew Yglesias, One Billion Americans, Penguin, 2022; M. Nolan Gray, Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It, Island Press, 2022; Jenny Schuetz, Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America’s Broken Housing Systems, Brookings Institution Press, 2022. ↩︎
  20. Avent, The Gated City; Glaeser, Triumph of the City; Yglesias, The Rent Is Too Damn High; Margery Austin Turner et al, “What Would It Take to Ensure Quality, Affordable Housing for All in Communities of Opportunity?,” Urban Institute, 2019; Dougherty, Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America; Gray, Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It; Schuetz, Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America’s Broken Housing Systems. ↩︎
  21. Vicki Been, Ingrid Gould Ellen, and Katherine O’Regan, “Supply Skepticism: Housing Supply and Affordability,” Furman Center, New York University, 2018. ↩︎
  22. Kate Pennington, “Does Building New Housing Cause Displacement? The Supply and Demand Effects of Construction in San Francisco,” Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California-Berkeley, 2021; Shane Phillips, Michael Manville, and Michael Lens, “The Effect of Market-Rate Development on Neighborhood Rents,” Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, University of California-Los Angeles, 2021. ↩︎
  23. Lane Kenworthy, “Social Democratic Capitalism,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  24. Kim A. Weeden, “Why Do Some Occupations Pay More Than Others? Social Closure and Earnings Inequality in the United States,” American Journal of Sociology, 2002; Dean Baker, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive, Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2011; Lisa Knepper et al, License to Work: A National Study of Burdens from Occupational Licensing, 3rd edition, Institute for Justice, 2022. ↩︎
  25. Alex Tabarrok, “Is the FDA Too Conservative or Too Aggressive?,” Marginal Revolution, 2015. See also Dudley and Brito, Regulation: A Primer, pp. 60-61. ↩︎
  26. Conor Friedersdorf, “The Death Toll of Delay,” The Atlantic, 2021. ↩︎
  27. Friedersdorf, “The Death Toll of Delay.” See also Alex Tabarrok, “The Most Important Act of the Past Two Decades?,” Marginal Revolution, 2021. ↩︎
  28. Brendan Borrell, “What America Lost by Delaying the Vaccine Rollout,” The Atlantic, 2022; Scott Duke Kominers and Alex Tabarrok, “Vaccines and the Covid-19 Pandemic: Lessons from Failure and Success,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2022. ↩︎
  29. Martin Wolf, The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned — and Have Still to Learn — from the Financial Crisis, Penguin, 2015, p. 137. ↩︎
  30. Alan S. Blinder, After the Music Stopped, Penguin, 2013, pp. 266-67. ↩︎
  31. Blinder, After the Music Stopped, pp. 59-60. ↩︎
  32. Lane Kenworthy, “Social Connections,” The Good Society. ↩︎
  33. Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, Penguin, 2024 ↩︎
  34. Kenworthy, “Weight Moderation.” ↩︎
  35. Kenworthy, “Weight Moderation.” ↩︎
  36. Sunstein, Simpler, ch. 8. ↩︎
  37. Sunstein, Simpler. ↩︎
  38. Tyler Cowen, “Sorry, Elon, but Businesses Rely on Regulation,” Bloomberg, 2024. ↩︎