In my “Innovative Entrepreneurs Replace Despair with Hope” paper (currently undergoing a second round of revision in response to referee requests), I argue that the worst off will benefit if we strengthen a redundant labor market by unbinding innovative entrepreneurs.
Regulations harm the worst off in other ways besides fewer jobs for the worst off. They disproportionately increase consumer prices in the categories, like food, that are most heavily consumed by the worst off (Chambers et al. 2019). They reduce wage growth (Bailey et al. 2019), increase poverty rates (Chambers et al. 2019b), generally increase inequality (Choudhury 2023; Chambers and O’Reilly 2019, 2022), and specifically increase inequality by disproportionately increasing salaries of regulation compliance workers, such as accountants, lawyers, and managers (Bailey et al. 2019, 92-93; Chambers et al. 2019a; Mulholland 2019). Finally, regulations increase mortality (Broughel and Chambers 2022).
Here are the sources cited above:
Bailey, James B., Diana W. Thomas, and Joseph R. Anderson. 2019. Regressive Effects of Regulation on Wages. Public Choice 180, nos. 1-2: 91-103.
Broughel, James, and Dustin Chambers. 2022. Federal Regulation and Mortality in the 50 States. Risk Analysis 42, no. 3 (March): 592-613.
Chambers, Dustin, Courtney A. Collins, and Alan Krause. 2019. How Do Federal Regulations Affect Consumer Prices? An Analysis of the Regressive Effects of Regulation. Public Choice 180, no. 1 (July): 57-90.
Chambers, Dustin, and Colin O’Reilly. 2019. Entry Regulations and Income Inequality at the Regional Level. Journal of Regional Analysis & Policy 49, no. 1: 31-39.
Chambers, Dustin, and Colin O’Reilly. 2022. Regulation and Income Inequality in the United States. European Journal of Political Economy 72 (March): 102101.
Chambers, Dustin, Patrick A. McLaughlin, and Laura Stanley. 2019a. Barriers to Prosperity: The Harmful Impact of Entry Regulations on Income Inequality. Public Choice 180, nos. 1/2 (July): 165-90.
Chambers, Dustin, Patrick A. McLaughlin, and Laura Stanley. 2019b. Regulation and Poverty: An Empirical Examination of the Relationship between the Incidence of Federal Regulation and the Occurrence of Poverty across the US States. Public Choice 180, nos. 1–2 (July): 131–44.
Choudhury, Sanchari. 2023. The Causal Effect of Regulation on Income Inequality across the U.S. States. European Journal of Political Economy 80 (Dec.): 102471.
Mulholland, Sean E. 2019. Stratification by Regulation: Are Bootleggers and Baptists Biased? Public Choice 180: 105–30.
An earlier draft of my “Innovative Entrepreneurs Replace Despair with Hope” paper can be found at: