Building on administrative data and machine-learning models, I develop a firm-specific measure of regulatory intensity: cost of compliance with all federal paperwork regulations. Regulatory intensity increases the cost of goods sold and overhead spending (SGA). It also incentivizes companies to reduce capital investment, hire fewer employees, and lobby more. The effects are particularly strong among financially constrained firms and those with irreversible investment opportunities, suggesting that regulation affects companies through budgetary pressures and heightened uncertainty. The findings highlight the real effects of regulation and the underlying mechanisms.

I study how promotion incentives within the public sector affect financial regulation. I assemble individual data for all SEC enforcement attorneys between 2002 and 2017, including enforcement cases, salaries, and ranks. Consistent with tournament model, attorneys with stronger promotion incentives are involved in more enforcement, especially against severe misconduct, and in tougher settlement terms. For identification, I rely on cross-sectional tests within offices and ranks and on exogenous variation in salaries resulting from a conversion to a new pay system. The findings highlight a novel link between incentives and regulation and show that the regulator’s organizational design affects securities markets.

Regulatory fragmentation occurs when multiple federal agencies oversee a single issue. Using the full text of the Federal Register, the government's official daily publication, we provide the first systematic evidence on the extent and costs of regulatory fragmentation. Fragmentation increases the firm's costs while lowering its productivity, profitability, and growth. Moreover, it deters entry into an industry and increases the propensity of small firms to exit. These effects arise from redundancy and, more prominently, from inconsistencies between government agencies. Our results uncover a new source of regulatory burden, and we show that agency costs among regulators contribute to this burden.