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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.

Aug 26, 2025

2 min

Joseph Kalmenovitz

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.


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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.


Connect with:
Joseph Kalmenovitz

Joseph Kalmenovitz

Assistant Professor of Finance

Kalmenovitz is an expert in the economics of regulation, how regulation is formed, and how regulation affects economic decisions.

Regulation

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