A new study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University places Montana as one of the states most impacted by federal regulations. Study Author Patrick McLaughlin explains.

“Montana ranked number 10 and that was driven for the most part by the petroleum and coal product manufacturing industry in Montana,” said McLaughlin. “That industry accounts for about 3% of Montana’s overall private sector of the economy. We are not counting by the way the economy produced by government expenditures. We are just looking at the private sector.”

McLauughlin explains a bit of the methodology behind the study.

“To do this, we use what’s called Reg Data,” McLaughlin said. “Reg Data is both a methodology and a data base. We have been developing it here in Mercatus for several years. What Reg Data does, is it lets us calculate how regulated each industry is in each year and also figure out which agencies are producing those regulations.”

The study places Louisiana, Alaska and Wyoming as the most impacted states for Federal Regulation. The least impacted states are mostly in the North East and include New Hampshire, Rhode island and Vermont.

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