Purpose - This paper aims to address two fundamental questions: (1) How has Bahrain's industrial policy evolved during the 21st century? and (2) what factors contribute to this evolution? Design/methodology/approach - Utilizing secondary data, this paper identifies key decision-makers...

Most federal agencies must conduct economic analysis when proposing major regulations. This paper uses a new data set scoring the quality of analysis accompanying proposed regulations in 2008 to assess whether some types of regulations receive more thorough analysis than others. Previous...

We examine the relationship between entry regulations and income inequality. Entry regulations increase the cost of legally starting a business relative to the alternatives — working for someone else, entering illegally, or exiting the labor force. We hypothesize that such regulations may...

Ever since its introduction in 2012, RegData—the Mercatus Center’s database for quantifying federal regulation—has served as an objective tool for measuring regulations within a jurisdiction. In the decade since its launch, RegData has expanded significantly to cover several jurisdictions,...

As the COVID-19 crisis intensified, policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels started suspending or rescinding laws and regulations that hindered sensible, speedy responses to the pandemic. These “rule departures” raised many questions. Were the paused rules undermining public...

We describe RegData 3.0, a database released by the RegData Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University on August 31, 2017, for the purpose of facilitating third-party usage. We explain the primary features of the database, describe the methodology used to build it, and list the...