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AbstractPrevious 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 U.S. state panel data set spanning the period 2000–2014, we estimate the effect of U.S. federal regulation on state‐level mortality. We find that a 1% increase in federal regulation of state economies is associated with an increase in an index of state mortality of between 0.53% and 1.35%. These findings are robust to the form of mortality measure, choice of covariates, and the inclusion/exclusion of various regions, states, and industries. We also provide an update of the "cost‐per‐life saved cutoff," which is the counterproductive risk threshold for expenditures. We find that expenditures in excess of $38.6 million (2019 dollars) per life saved can be expected to increase mortality risk. This article fills an important gap in the empirical literature and boosts the credibility of mortality risk analysis, whereby public policymakers weigh both the expected lives saved and lost due to a proposed regulation or other policy.

AbstractTesting the hypothesis that the resource curse promotes rent‐seeking behaviour at the expense of entrepreneurship, we examine the relationship between natural resource rents and new business creation using a panel of 116 countries spanning the period 2001–2012. We find that nations with heavy natural resource extraction exhibit less entrepreneurial activity, but this negative relationship is greatly reduced and even reversed in nations possessing a threshold level of governance quality. Unfortunately, the group of nations exceeding this threshold consists primarily of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development members. These results support the hypothesis that the resource curse, when left unchecked by weak institutions, promotes rent‐seeking behaviour that harms entrepreneurship. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

ABSTRACTUsing Hofstede's cultural data set, this paper examines the impact of cultural characteristics on a nation's economic performance. Using a two‐step estimation procedure, we first estimate a panel growth regression and obtain estimates of each nation's fixed effects, which reflect idiosyncratic differences in growth performance. In the second step, we regress the fixed effects on invariant cultural and institutional variables. Our estimation results suggest that individuality and tolerance for uncertainty are the most important cultural factors in explaining nation‐specific growth performance. Furthermore, our findings suggest that political and property rights play a major role in determining idiosyncratic growth.

AbstractThis paper examines the disparate impact of US federal regulations on small businesses. Using a two‐sector dynamic general equilibrium model, we obtained two implications of higher regulation on small firms that have yet to be empirically tested in the published literature. First, as regulations increase, small firms' share of employment shrinks. Second, as regulations rise, small firms' share of total output falls. Using a panel of industry‐specific US regulatory restrictions, we found that a 10% increase in federal regulations was associated with an approximate 0.8% reduction in small firms' share of industry employment and a nearly 1.5% decline in small firms' share of industry output.