¿Cómo afecta la complejidad de la regulación a la demografía empresarial? Evidencia para España
Series: Working Papers. 2002.
Author: Juan S. Mora-Sanguinetti and Ricardo Pérez-Valls.
Published in: European Journal of Law & Economics.
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Abstract
The volume and fragmentation of regulation are important for business demography. They
may imply that the market is divided, reducing firm size and their chances of benefiting
from economies of scale. This paper has two objectives: it analyzes the results of a new
database on regulation in Spain and explores the impacts of the complexity of the regulatory
framework on business demography. The volume of new norms enacted in Spain has
increased by four-fold since the end of the 70s, reaching 11,737 regulations in 2018. The
results of our analysis indicate that the complexity of the regulatory framework, broken down
at the local level, is negatively related to the total number of firms in Spain and to firm entry
(reducing the capital of the new firms). This conclusion hides an interesting composition
effect: the complexity is negatively related to the presence of limited liability companies (SL),
which have a larger size and could take advantage of economies of scale (doing business
throughout the territory). However, it is positively related to the presence of individuals with
business activity (which are smaller) and which may have activities connected with local
regulations and local markets. The analysis proposed in this paper is relevant for the study
of productivity in Spain.