The aim of the proposed research project is to comprehensively investigate the phenomenon known as legislative/regulatory inflation (defined as the increase in the number, size and variability of primary legislation) in Poland in the years 1997–2019. The current number of newly introduced legal acts means that every citizen should spend more than four hours a day getting acquainted with the newly adopted legislation. Of course, devoting not only 4 ¼, but even one hour a day to reading legal acts published in the Polish Journal of Laws remains far beyond the cognitive capabilities (and willingness) of citizens. As such, the research project attempts to shed light on how legislation in such abundance influences people’s behavior and how citizens navigate an increasing number of pieces of legislation.

The starting point of the proposed project is the analysis of legislative statistics documenting the number, volume and other features of newly adopted legal acts – and an attempt to investigate the key factors responsible for legislative/regulatory inflation. After this, we shift the focus from the number of legal acts to their effects – to examine the extent to which the growing number of legal acts translates into real restrictions in the everyday activities of entrepreneurs. For this purpose, we will use data from the assessment of the newly adopted law (act) in terms of its expected impact on the economy and entrepreneurship, as well as the results of analyzes of the characteristics of the Polish legal resources (acts) using the text mining method using Python software, in cross-sections at the end of each parliamentary term in years 1997–2020 according to the method developed by the team. We will then analyze the strategies citizens use to overcome the problem of legislative/regulatory inflation. For this purpose, a survey of the opinions of citizens (including employees and entrepreneurs) will be commissioned, the results of which will allow to identify sources of information about legal acts, measure the perception of legislative/regulatory inflation, assess the awareness of the knowledge of law that respondents should know and discover strategies for coping with everyday problems. interactions, among others with bureaucracy taking into account the lack of knowledge of specific legal acts in conditions of legislative inflation. In addition, the project examines what legislative inflation means for the administrative justice system (tax matters).

The study addresses an important question: is the principle of ignorantia iuris nocet still valid in conditions of legislative inflation? If citizens are unable to learn about the relevant standards, they cannot rationally decide to follow them – indeed, a survey of the legal awareness of the Polish public has already indicated a staggering lack of knowledge about fundamental issues in everyday activities within the legal system.

The results of the study of the characteristics of the Polish legal system (acts) will be used to verify the hypothesis that sectoral regulations influence the business cycle in subsectors of the Polish economy, as indicated by studies of the relationship between regulations and institutions (investor protection) with lending and capital indicators. The results obtained in the project, including strategies used to deal with legislative/regulatory inflation, such as heuristics – rules allowing “good enough” decisions to be made in conditions of incomplete information, will help answer the question of how normative systems influence human behavior and economic entities. Also, the results on the key factors of legislative/regulatory inflation will help to develop the theory of regulation, which is currently based on the assumption that new law benefits the general public rather than pressure groups. So far, the theory has not been able to explain the abundance of regulations with negligible impact that is observed located in Poland.