Briefly in paragraphs which follow the major regulations of the Americanlabor market are discussed. These include which aspects have been studied, the methods of analysis and in a few cases some of the major conclusions.Certain generalities apply. Typically American economists do not generatetheir own data, rather they rely upon major government surveys for theirdata. Chief among these have been the National Longitudinal Surveys con-cerning the elderly and youth and the Current Population data which comesfrom the monthly labor force survey. The use of these large data sets havethe obvious advantage that the sample size is quite large which allows fordivision along a number of attributes without loss of statistical significance.The disadvantage is that variables may not quite be what theory woulddictate.The method of analysis is to run regression equations of one form oranother. Often the dependent variable will be "yes" or "no" making probittype regressions quite popular. The dependent variables of interest, wages,employment, the timing of events, etc. are regressed against an independentvariable said to represent different regulatory states, and a series of controlvariables which hopefully hold other things constant. With the advent ofchanged levels of regulation it is sometime possible to engage in what theusers like to refer to as a natural experiment. Thus before the new regulationtakes place data are collected from specific firms or states and these data arecompared with the same information after the advent of the new regulation.Alternatively before and after regression equations are run for supposedlysimilar states or firms some of which have been and the others have not beenaffected by the new regulations. The analytical tool is still the econometricequation but the independent variable is correctly specified and fewer controlvariables may have been necessary.