Dr. McLaughlin’s primary line of research focuses on regulations and the regulatory process.  He co-created RegData with Omar Al-Ubaydli. Some of his other projects include: assessing how economic analysis is used in in federal rulemaking, measuring the quality of regulatory impact analysis, and testing the effects of electoral cycles on the quality of regulatory output.  Dr. McLaughlin also has research interests in several other fields that are often affected by regulations, including environmental economics, international trade, and transportation economics.  Dr. McLaughlin has published in the fields of law and economics, public choice, environmental economics, and international trade, and he has testified before both houses of Congress as well as state legislatures.

Dr. McLaughlin is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.  He previously worked for the Federal Railroad Administration in the United States Department of Transportation and was a Visiting Scholar at George Washington University in the Regulatory Studies Center.  Prior to that, Dr. McLaughlin was a Graduate Research Fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana.  He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Clemson University.