Feature Essay: Bootleggers, Baptists, and Rising Waves of Regulation

Mr. Biden's Crises Agenda Will Bring a High Tide

Introduction

The Bootleggers/Baptists (B/B) theory of regulation was unveiled in 1983 in what was then the American Enterprise Institute’s Regulation magazine (Yandle 1983, Smith & Yandle 2014).  At the time, the count of newly proposed pieces of social regulation—rules that specify how things are produced and consumed—was exploding (Miller & Yandle 1987…