The primary focus of the Competitive Enterprise Institute since its founding in 1984 has been to promote deregulation. Government regulation of the economy blocks innovation and wealth creation. It also encourages damaging behavior such as rent-seeking and cronyism. Finally, it crowds out more effective forms of regulation such as market discipline.
The beneficial effects of deregulation were plain in the airline and freight rail industries. Deregulation begun in the Carter administration led to more flights at lower cost and to better rail infrastructure and much lower shipping costs. Yet, since the 1990s, successive administrations of different political stripes have piled on regulations, burdening the economy needlessly. We chart this problem every year in our Ten Thousand Commandments report.
The power of regulators now raises constitutional concerns. Regulators are often unaccountable, and their insulation from the checks and balances of the constitutional system suggests that they may in effect form a fourth branch of government. The use of guidance documents to avoid rulemaking procedures, for instance, can amount to government by decree. Deregulation is therefore essential to restore good constitutional order.
CEI advocates for both overall regulatory reform – changing the ways in which rules are made to make them more transparent and easier to remove – and for specific regulatory changes. Recent successes include recognition of our concerns in Executive Orders promoting deregulation and curtailing the use of guidance, and in the reflection of our comments in rules promulgated by agencies such as the Department of Labor and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Deregulation Issue Areas
Featured Posts
Blog
The UK Should Beware of Future Restrictions against UK-EU Data Flows
The British government must beware of future challenges to the United Kingdom’s ability to transfer data to and from the European Economic Area (EEA) due…
Blog
New CEI Paper Revisits Viral Exchange on Payday Loan Rates by Katie Porter and Kathy Kraninger.
It’s not every day an exchange about a technical measurement for loans goes viral on social media. During a 2019 House Committee on Financial…
Inside Sources
Government Mandates for APR Calculations on Small-Dollar Loans Mislead Consumers
As public health turns a corner and the travel industry begins to recover, imagine if the federal government were to impose a crazy rule on…
Studies
The Annual Percentage Rate Is the Wrong Metric for Assessing the Cost of a Short-Term Loan
View Full Document as PDF Think calculating the cost of a loan is simple? Not under the longtime rules of the federal government…
EPA Should Revise Its Assessment of Medical Supply Sterilant
The COVID-19 crisis is a stark reminder of the importance of maintaining critical medical supplies. Not only must policy makers ensure that the market is…
The Double Standards of Cannabis and Nicotine
View Full Document as PDF Executive Summary The principal benefit of recreational cannabis, as the name implies, is recreation. Many who enjoy using…
Blog
Who Pays Corporate Taxes?
Congress is considering increasing the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent to help pay for the big infrastructure bill it is currently…
The London Stock Exchange Needs Dual-Class Ownership to Compete with New York and Amsterdam
Notwithstanding London’s status as a global financial center, the London Stock Exchange’s (LSE) inflexible listing rules constrain the city’s ability to attract high-growth tech…
This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Washington’s attention flitted back and forth between beginning work on a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure bill and a brewing sex scandal allegedly involving Rep. Matt Gaetz and…
News
Report: APR Calculation Misleading as Applied to Short-Term Loan Costs
A new Competitive Enterprise Institute report criticizes efforts by lawmakers and activists to impose a cap on small-dollar, short-term loans based on a hypothetical…
U.S. Economy Added 916k Jobs in March 2021, Further Proof Lifting Govt Restrictions Helps Recovery
The U.S. economy experienced gains in March, due to states reopening and vaccines rolling out. Sean Higgins, CEI research fellow, urged governments to continue…
CEI Commends Sen. Lankford for Introducing Pandemic Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Act
On Thursday, Senator James Lankford (R-OK) introduced the Pandemic Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Act. The bill would establish an independent commission to…
Op-Eds
National Review
SEC Unbound: Yet More Regulatory Creep
Federal agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have long varied in their focus and priorities, depending on their current leadership and the ideological composition…
Washington Examiner
Congress must reassert its legislative authority
It is tempting to claim that resource allocation questions are starker than ever. The classic formulation in political science is guns or…
National Review
Tyrannosaurus Regs and Regulatory Dark Matter: Biden’s Accountability Deficit on Regulation
Washington’s new motto is: When you run out of other people’s money, keep spending anyway. It’s a sad state of affairs when a national debt …
Staff & Scholars
John Berlau
Senior Fellow
- Banking and Finance
- Deregulation
- Financial Regulation
Clyde Wayne Crews
Vice President for Policy and Senior Fellow
- Business and Government
- Consumer Freedom
- Deregulation
Sean Higgins
Research Fellow
- Deregulation
- Labor and Employment
Sam Kazman
General Counsel
- Antitrust
- Automobiles and Roads
- Banking and Finance
Kent Lassman
President and CEO
- Capitalism
- Deregulation
- Innovation
Marlo Lewis, Jr.
Senior Fellow
- Climate
- Energy
- Energy and Environment
Angela Logomasini
Senior Fellow
- Chemical Risk
- Consumer Freedom
- Energy and Environment
Michelle Minton
Senior Fellow
- Consumer Freedom
- Consumer Product Safety
- Consumer Well-Being
Iain Murray
Vice President for Strategy and Senior Fellow
- Banking and Finance
- Trade and International
Ivan Osorio
Editorial Director
- Labor and Employment
Ryan Radia
Research Fellow and Regulatory Counsel
- Intellectual Property
- Media, Speech and Internet Freedoms
- Privacy and Cybersecurity
Fran Smith
Adjunct Fellow
- Trade and International
Fred L. Smith, Jr.
Founder; Chairman Emeritus
- Automobiles and Roads
- Aviation
- Business and Government
Ryan Young
Senior Fellow
- Business and Government
- Regulatory Reform