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Professor Kalmenovitz is primarily interested in the economics of regulations. Companies view regulation as a major risk factor that profoundly affects every business decision. But there is surprisingly little research on regulation. Even basic questions, such as how to measure regulation, remain unsolved. Kalmenovitz works with large new datasets and relies on his extensive legal training to try to shed light on this fundamental topic. He is also interested in the intersection of finance and labor and in corporate governance.

Kalmenovitz is a member of the Israel Bar Association and served as a senior law clerk for the Supreme Court of Israel prior to his academic career.

Regulation

Playing by Rules Costs Wall Street Extra 51 Million Hours a Year

Should We Pay Regulators According to Their Performance?

as-trump-rolls-back-regulations-this-expert-examines-the-costs-of-compliance

University of Rochester assistant professor of finance Joseph Kalmenovitz studies how rules shape businesses—and what happens when governments ease them.

Assistant Professor of Finance at the Simon Business School

President Donald Trump has signaled a push to scale back federal regulation across a wide range of industries, reigniting a national debate over the costs and benefits of government rules. For Joseph Kalmenovitz, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School who studies the economics of regulation, the moment underscores the importance of understanding not just what regulations do — but how much they cost.

Kalmenovitz, who combines legal training with cutting-edge empirical methods, has developed innovative ways to measure regulatory intensity. His research shows how compliance requirements translate into millions of additional hours of paperwork for firms — costs that often fall outside public view. A recent Bloomberg Law article cited his work in explaining how Wall Street alone devotes an estimated 51 million extra hours each year to compliance since the Great Financial Crisis.

Beyond tallying hours, Kalmenovitz’s studies also explore how overlapping rules across agencies — what he calls “regulatory fragmentation” — can stifle productivity, profitability, and growth, especially for smaller firms. His long-term aim is to provide evidence-based insights that can guide smarter rulemaking in Washington.

“The dream is that people will take insights from my work and use them to improve the way regulation is conceived,” he told Simon Business Magazine. Kalmenovitz is a leading voice in translating data into meaningful insights about the hidden costs and design of regulation whose work has been published in the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, Management Science, and the Journal of Law and Economics. He is available for interviews and can be contacted through his profile.



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