Study: Cost of U.S. Regulations Larger Than Germany’s Economy

[Geee]

Free Beacon:

The cost of U.S. regulations is now larger than Germany’s economy, amounting to a $4 trillion loss to the American economy, according to a new study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

 

The study, released Tuesday, found that regulations over the past several decades amount to a loss of $13,000 for each American worker.

 

“The impact of regulation on economic growth has been widely studied, but most research has focused on a narrow set of regulations, industries, or both,” according to the report. “These studies typically rely on regulatory indexes that measure subsets of all regulation, on country-to-country comparisons, on short time spans, or on surveys in which experts report how regulated they believe their country or industry is.

 

“In order to better understand the cumulative cost of regulation, a comprehensive look at all regulations across many industries over a long period of time is imperative.”

 

Researchers at Mercatus studied data from 22 industries from 1977 to 2012, finding regulations have distorted “investments choices that lead to innovation” and have “created a considerable drag on the economy.” The result: an average shrinking of the economy by 0.8 percent a year.