Patrick A. McLaughlin

Patrick A. McLaughlin is the Shepard Family Research Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a Visiting Research Fellow at the Pacific Legal Foundation, and an Affiliated Member of the Frankfurt Competence Center for German and Global Regulation. His research focuses on regulations and the regulatory process.

McLaughlin created and leads the RegData and QuantGov projects, which deploy machine learning and other tools of data science to quantify governance indicators found in federal and state regulations, statutes, and other policy documents. The resulting databases have facilitated pioneering empirical research by hundreds of third-party users on the causes and effects of regulation — including use by the Congressional Budget Office in its analysis of federal legislation.

He has authored over forty peer-reviewed studies spanning regulatory economics, administrative law, industrial organization, and international trade, and is co-author of The Impact of Federal Regulation on the Fifty States. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Regulatory Economics and has testified before both houses of Congress and multiple state legislatures. His research and commentary have been featured in The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico, and The Hill, among others. He writes about the economics of regulation at Third Order.

Before joining Hoover, McLaughlin was a Senior Research Fellow and Director of Policy Analytics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He holds a PhD in economics from Clemson University.