Data Collection for Cost Estimation in Regulatory Impact Analysis

RIA as a tool for better regulation is expanding rapidly in the European Commission and among European Member States. Many countries have published RIA-guidance and offer training for civil servants performing RIA. Most guidelines stress the importance of a sound methodology and the desirability of quantification of costs and benefits. More detailed RIA guidance often discusses valuation techniques, data collection strategies and other approaches to derive cost and benefit estimates. Since 2003, there have been been a range of recent evaluation exercises of RIAs, in the European Commission as well as in Member States. They point to some common problems associated with RIA, such as non-availability of data, difficulties in quantification, and lack of skills or resources to comply with the RIA quantification requirements. Not surprisingly, many RIAs seem to fall short on quantified and monetized data. Even in countries an regions where RIA has been there for many years and a lot of emphasis is put on quantification, like the US and the UK, is it repeatedly reported that the costs (and where relevant the benefits) have not of not accurately been quantified and assessed. Regulatory units within governments or administrations often recognise these points. But they seem to think that, at this stage in the development of RIA, there are other aspects of the assessment process whose improvement might add more value, and might therefore merit higher priority in the immediate future than quantification. While this may be true, we believe that the problem of insufficient quantification in RIAs remains very important. The investment in getting better costs estimates moreover seems often small relative to the potential efficiencies provided by better quality cost estimates. The purpose of this working paper is therefore to explore the type of data that is considered necessary or desirable in performing a good RIA (demand side) as well as the range of techniques and data sources that are being used in RIAs (supply side). We mainly focus on quantification of costs for business and the economy. In the next phase of the research project, we will look for opportunities to narrow the current gap between demand and supply. Our overall aim is to contribute to lower data collection costs, in order to shift the balance in decisions about how extensive the RIA analysis should be (cf. the notion of proportionate analysis) towards more comprehensive assessments, and therefore higher quality RIAs and ultimately better regulation.

Impact assessment in the European Commission: quantifying benefits and costs.

This paper was presented during the ENBR Workshop on Methodology, held at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam on December 14, 2006.

Methods to measure administrative burdens

This paper was presented during the ENBR Workshop on Methodology, held at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam on December 14, 2006.

Methodological Problems of the Polish System of Regulation Impact Assessment

The aim of the article is to present the main conclusions and methodological questions arising from the functioning of the system of regulation impact assessment in Poland since 2002 and the explanation of changes arising from the new government Regulation Reform programme. Remarks are made against the background of the theory of legislation and the methodological work carried out by the OECD, the European Commission and other countries with respect to the Regulation Impact Assessment (RIA). This paper was presented during the ENBR Workshop on Methodology, held at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam on December 14, 2006.

Decentralisation, regulatory burden and economic development in Spain

One of the contributions of the Chicago School to economic theory is that of underlining the importance of compliance costs on entrepreneurial activity and economic growth. From a business perspective, complying with general regulations and administrative redtape is a costly burden that may affect the competitiveness of the economy and the overall efficiency of the system. The main purpose of this paper is to estimate the effect of these compliance costs on Spanish regional economic development. The current situation of the State of the Autonomies in Spain provides a suitable scenario to test some of the main implications of the abovementioned thesis of considering regulation and compliance as costs for businesses. Indeed, the decentralisation of legislative and regulatory competences from the Central Government to the so called Self-governing Communities (Comunidades Autónomas) –which began in the early 1980s and has been progressively developed until these days- has generated a substantial variety of situations that may turn to be useful in empirically evaluating the effect of the exercise of the legislative and regulatory competences by the Self-governing Communities on their regional economic development and business activity. In practice, it is difficult to determine whether Spanish (or any other) authorities regulate in excess or not. The optimum level of regulation is nearly impossible to determine, among other issues, because it depends on the quality of regulation –which is very difficult to evaluate. However, it is possible to estimate the impact of the intensity of normative and regulatory activity of the Self-governing Communities on their regional economic performance. This paper aims to evaluate the evolution of legislative and regulatory decentralisation in Spain and its impact on economic development of the Spanish Self-governing Communities between 1988 and 2005, on the basis of certain objective proxies for legislative and regulatory activity (such as the number of pages published in the several Spanish official journals and legislative collections). This paper was presented during the ENBR Workshop on Methodology, held at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam on December 14, 2006.

ENBR

European Network for Better Regulation