Omar Al-Ubaydli and Patrick McLaughlin (both at George Mason University) have an article in the most recent issue of Regulation & Governance documenting their RegData database, which “measures [federal] regulation for industries at the two, three, and four-digit levels of the North American Industry Classification System.” While any attempt to quantify regulations is fraught with problems, as the authors note in their paper, their text-based approach would seem as good a method as any (and superior to some) for providing a numerical measure of regulation that could be used for empirical research. And what’s even better, the data are freely available here. The abstract of the paper reads:
We introduce RegData, formerly known as the Industry-specific Regulatory Constraint Database. RegData annually quantifies federal regulations by industry and regulatory agency for all federal regulations from 1997–2012. The quantification of regulations at the industry level for all industries is without precedent. RegData measures regulation for industries at the two, three, and four-digit levels of the North American Industry Classification System. We created this database using text analysis to count binding constraints in the wording of regulations, as codified in the Code of Federal Regulations, and to measure the applicability of regulatory text to different industries. We validate our measures of regulation by examining known episodes of regulatory growth and deregulation, as well as by comparing our measures to an existing, cross-sectional measure of regulation. Researchers can use this database to study the determinants of industry regulations and to study regulations’ effects on a massive array of dependent variables, both across industries and time.
Now, if only there was such a database of State-level regulations.