A cross-country comparison of macroeconomic performance in terms of productivity growth and utilization of resources with the OECD’s index of the overall regulatory environment suggests that a country’s performance does improve as the regulatory environment becomes less restrictive.
On a micro level, differences in the regulatory regimes of the biotechnology industry in Europe and the United States have been cited as playing an important role in explaining why US firms are ahead of European firms in important measures of innovation such as R&D expenditures and patents.