American Craft Beer The Best Craft Beer, Breweries, Bars, Brewpubs, Beer Stores, And Restaurants Serving Serious Beer.
Did you know that of the 115,000 federal regulations that impact the US beer supply chain?
And that on average each state imposes 10,212 regulations on the production and distribution of beer?
That’s true according to a new paper released today from the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University.
Researchers have long studied the relationships between regulation and business growth, but less studied are the variations in regulations across states.
Those regulations can vary dramatically across legislative jurisdictions with federal, state, and local governments all playing a role.
And business owners and entrepreneurs must invest significant time and effort in understanding how to comply with these overlapping regulations in order to grow their breweries.
In the new study economists Aaron Staples, Dustin Chambers, and Trey Malone explore variations across US states in the regulation of the beer supply chain and came up with the best and worst states to be in if you want to be in the beer biz (at least from a regulatory perspective).
(Figure courtesy The Economic Geography of Beer Regulations)
The authors count the number of industry-level regulatory restrictions contained in each state’s administrative law in order to assess the impact for both the industries that produce needed inputs for beer production, as well as the impact on downstream industries that distribute beer to consumers.
According to the study’s findings the five least-regulated states in the US are:
South Dakota (1,177 regulations)
Idaho (2,450)
North Dakota (2,936)
Arizona (2,989)
Nevada (3,977)
The five most-regulated states are:
California (25,870 regulations)
Texas (24,076)
New York (22,648)
Illinois (22,198)
Washington (17,573)
(Figure courtesy The Economic Geography of Beer Regulations)
By quantifying the differences in state-level regulation of beer production, this research suggests that it’s often more difficult for producers to provide their products than it may appear.
Going forward, the authors suggest that regulations which focus on goals and outcomes may be preferable to regulations that micromanage production.
They also emphasize the need for well-written, straightforward regulations in order to reduce compliance costs to allow industries like beer brewing to flourish.
