For helpful comments on earlier drafts, we thank, without implicating, Moses Abramovitz, Yves Balcer, John Bishop, Alan Blinder, Richard Burkhauser, Michael Darby, Irwin Garfinkel, Alan Gustman, Daniel Hamermesh, Martin Holmer, George Jakubson, Robert Lampman, Paul Menchik, Robert Moffitt, Michael Murray, Joseph Quinn, Timothy Smeeding, Eugene Smolensky, Barbara Wolfe and two anonymous referees.

A time-series regression model of the US manufacturing sector is developed to estimate the direct and indirect relationships of public regulations and productivity for the 1973 to 1977 period. Preliminary results show that 12 to 21% of the productivity slowdown is blamed on regulation. Other contributing factors are a reduced non-labor to labor input (15%), average cyclical impact (0 to 15%), and a combination of changes in labor composition, expenses for research and development, and shifts in sectoral output. The study focuses on measured productivity, and the results have little implication to true productivity growth. 14 references, 24 tables. (DCK)