Is regulation to blame for the decline in American entrepreneurship?

Citation: Nathan Goldschlag, Alex Tabarrok (2018) Is regulation to blame for the decline in American entrepreneurship?. Economic Policy (RSS)
DOI (original publisher): 10.1093/epolic/eix019
Semantic Scholar (metadata): 10.1093/epolic/eix019
Sci-Hub (fulltext): 10.1093/epolic/eix019
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Is regulation to blame for the decline in American entrepreneurship?
Download: https://academic.oup.com/economicpolicy/article/33/93/5/4833996?guestAccessKey=30b0a3f7-9dff-4bd9-95e9-e3ffad1691b5
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Summary

Economic dynamism (measured as job and firm creation and destruction) has declined in the US over the last several decades (and in much of the world, as mentioned in passing by the authors). To what extent has increased federal regulation decreased dynamism? Authors take advantage of improved data about regulations (previous studies have used indicators such as page counts; this paper looks at restrictive keywords such as shall, require...) and industries they impact (use machine classification to identify industries).

No correlation is found.

Authors briefly discuss various other explanations of declining dynamism which need more research, from firms using technology to become more robust to idiosyncratic shocks to state and local regulation.

Theoretical and Practical Relevance

Blog post by one of the authors http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/02/federal-regulation-not-cause-declining-dynamism.html