Subjective and objective measures of governmental regulations in OECD nations

Since government regulations may have an important impact on the macroeconomic performance of market economies, it is necessary to devise quantitative indicators of the regulatory regime, which raises some difficult methodological issues. After reviewing some of these problems, we compare the results of several recent quantitative studies of regulation in OECD nations, some based on an extensive review and quantification of laws and regulations, others based on observational data of those familiar with these regulations. Despite their very different methodologies and coverage of particular types of governmental regulation, the results of the three studies are significantly correlated, which suggests that they all capture the same underlying reality.