Previous research speculates that some regulations are counterproductive in the sense that they increase (rather than decrease) mortality risk. However, few empirical studies have measured the extent to which this phenomenon holds across the regulatory system as a whole. Using a novel US state...

Mulligan and Shleifer (2005) put forward a theory of regulation in which a fixed cost of regulating leads larger polities to regulate more. This follows a prediction made in Demsetz (1967) that because institutions have fixed costs associated with their establishment, introducing an institution...