The Cost of Regulatory Compliance in the United States

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Trebbi, Francesco; Ben Zhang, Miao; Simkovic, Michael
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Berkeley; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Southern California; University of Southern California
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF FINANCIAL STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0893-9454; 1465-7368
• DOI: 10.1093/rfs/hhag046
• 发表日期: 2026-09
• 页码: 2901-2962
• 关键词: G38; J01; k2; L43; L51; firm size; environmental-regulations; ENFORCEMENT; PRODUCTIVITY; distortions; uncertainty; inspections; TECHNOLOGY; ECONOMICS; LAWS

摘要

A key question for studying business dynamism is whether the costs of regulatory compliance fall homogeneously on small and large businesses. Using comprehensive establishment-level occupational microdata and occupation task information, we quantify a firm's compliance costs as the share of wage bill for performing regulatory compliance tasks (RegIndex). We reveal an inverted-U relationship between firms' RegIndex and their size: On average, RegIndex for mid-sized firms with around 500 employees is about 47% greater than that of the smallest firms and 18% greater than that of the largest firms. We further develop a shift-share methodology to disentangle the influence of regulatory requirements and enforcement on driving firms' compliance costs.