Interesting; thanks. Of course it would be surprising if a document from the Mercatus Center didn't conclude that regulation is economically disastrous, even in a hypothetical world where regulation is purely beneficial :-). (And their analysis is complicated enough that "how much do I trust the authors?" does seem like as important a question as "does it seem like they're doing the right thing?", when trying to figure out whether their results are likely to have much to do with the real world.)