Regulation

In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context.

[2] State-mandated regulation is government intervention in the private market in an attempt to implement policy and produce outcomes which might not otherwise occur,[3] ranging from consumer protection to faster growth or technological advancement.

[12] The QuantGov project[13] at the Mercatus Center tracks the count of regulations by topic for United States, Canada, and Australia.

Standardized weights and measures existed to an extent in the ancient world, and gold may have operated to some degree as an international currency.

Beginning in the late 19th and 20th centuries, much of regulation in the United States was administered and enforced by regulatory agencies which produced their own administrative law and procedures under the authority of statutes.

In the 1930s, lawmakers believed that unregulated business often led to injustice and inefficiency; in the 1960s and 1970s, concern shifted to regulatory capture, which led to extremely detailed laws creating the United States Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration.