A measure of U.S. deregulation constructed using large language models from 1960 to present.
✓ Updated through December 2025
The Deregulation Index measures the intensity of U.S. deregulation activity based on newspaper coverage. Using large language models (LLMs) to classify over 600,000 New York Times articles from 1960 to 2025, we construct daily time series that capture major deregulatory episodes across sectors and regulatory types.
We apply GPT-4o-mini to semantically classify articles, distinguishing deregulation from increased regulation and assigning intensity scores (0.0-1.0). The model evaluates whether articles discuss advocacy, proposals, or enacted measures. Human validation confirms strong agreement between LLM and human classifications.
The index captures major reform episodes including transportation and telecommunications liberalization in the 1970s-1980s, financial deregulation in the 1980s-1990s, and recent deregulatory activity. We provide decompositions by sector (finance, energy, telecom, transportation, etc.) and regulation type (price controls, entry barriers, etc.).
We validate the news-based index against a parallel index constructed from Federal Register documents. The news index leads the Federal Register by nine months, consistent with media coverage reflecting policy intentions before formal implementation. The strong correlation confirms both measures capture genuine regulatory policy variation.
Note: The deregulation index is normalized to mean = 100 over 1995-2019. Higher values indicate more intense deregulation activity.
| File | Description | Format | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Headline Index (Daily) | Daily deregulation index, 1960-2025 | CSV | |
| Headline Index (Monthly) | Monthly average deregulation index | CSV | |
| Headline Index (Quarterly) | Quarterly average deregulation index | CSV | |
| Sectoral Indexes (Daily) | Daily indexes by sector (finance, energy, etc.) | CSV | |
| Sectoral Indexes (Monthly) | Monthly average sectoral indexes | CSV | |
| Sectoral Indexes (Quarterly) | Quarterly average sectoral indexes | CSV |
Last updated: February 2026
@article{cascaldi2026deregulation,
title={Quantifying Deregulation and its Economic Effects: A Large Language Model Approach},
author={Cascaldi-Garcia, Danilo and Iacoviello, Matteo},
journal={Working Paper, Federal Reserve Board},
year={2026}
}