Fascinating research from Josh Bivens. He suggests that far from reducing economic growth and employment much regulation can boost both.

His argument sounds convincing. When economies are doing well and booming new regulations takes resources away from increase output. That at such times people are willing to pay more so costs of regulation are passed onto buyers feeding inflation. But when capacity is not growing and company board rooms have record cash piles and are unable to pass price rises on adding regulations can make companies use some of their cash mountains to impliment new regulations.

The example of regulations he referenced are US regulations around clean air – The Mercury and Air Toxic Standards. They’re designed to stop up to 11,000 premature deaths a year and attempts to delay them beign enforced are taking place.

So what are environment regulations we could impliment to improve our air, etc that would drive companies to spend some of the UK corporate cash mountains whil saving lots of preamture deaths?