Patrick A. McLaughlin

About

Patrick A. McLaughlin is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a Visiting Research Fellow at the Pacific Legal Foundation, and an Affiliated Member of the Frankfurt Competence Center for German and Global Regulation (FCCR) at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. His research focuses primarily on regulations and the regulatory process.

McLaughlin created and leads the RegData and QuantGov projects, deploying machine learning and other tools of data science to quantify governance indicators found in federal and state regulations, statutes, and other policy documents. The resulting database, freely available at QuantGov.org, has facilitated pioneering empirical research by hundreds of third-party users on the causes and effects of regulation.

He has authored over thirty peer-reviewed studies in diverse areas, including regulatory economics, administrative law, industrial organization, and international trade. He is the co-author, with Oliver Sherouse, of The Impact of Federal Regulation on the Fifty States. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Regulatory Economics.

McLaughlin has given expert testimonies before Congress and state legislatures on topics ranging from the economic implications of regulatory accumulation to the potential impacts of regulatory reform. His research and op-eds have been featured in a wide range of media outlets, including The Economist, C-SPAN, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Politico, and The Hill. He maintains a blog, Third Order, about the economics of regulation and deregulation at https://thirdorder.substack.com.

Before joining Hoover, he was a Senior Research Fellow and Director of Policy Analytics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He holds a PhD in economics from Clemson University.