Population and Regulation

Here's an interesting-looking paper, by Casey Mulligan and Andrei Shleifer, entitled "Population and Regulation." The paper "present[s] a model of efficient regulation" in which "setting up and running regulatory institutions takes a fixed cost, and therefore jurisdictions with larger populations affected by a given regulation are more likely to have them." "In both the efficiency and redistribution versions of our model," the authors conclude, "having a larger [i.e., more populous] jurisdiction is better." "In the efficiency model, regulation reduces the marginal cost of addressing social problems[.] In the redistributive model of regulation, more interests are articulated when the jurisdiction is larger." The authors note, though, that "competition among jurisdictions as in Tiebout (1956) or diversity of preferences among people (Alesina and Spolaore 2003) are arguments favoring smaller jurisdictions."

There is, to be sure, much more to this paper, and I am sure that much of it goes well beyond my own understanding and training. Still, it strikes me that the paper's project, and its conclusions, are quite interesting from a CST / subsidiarity point of view.

Rob? Steve? Others? What do you think?

Thanks, as always, to Larry Solum for the tip.

Rick