Regulatory impact assessment tools and techniques

Learn how regulatory impact assessment (RIA) offers a balanced, evidence-based review of proposed and existing regulations and non-regulatory options, with ex ante and ex post analyses.

Learn how regulatory impact assessment tools and techniques have spread worldwide since the 1970s, with mandatory RIAs shaping policymaking through capacity building, stakeholder engagement, and proportionality and scope guidelines.

Select and apply regulatory impact assessment tools, from cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses to multi-criteria, standard cost models, SAM, and CGE, with risk analysis as needed.

Apply cost-benefit analysis to regulatory impact assessment by identifying costs and benefits, monetizing them, and using net present value, sensitivity analysis, and the social discount rate.

Compare multiple regulatory options using cost-effectiveness analysis, measuring outcomes in non-monetary units like lives saved and calculating a cost-per-outcome ratio with sensitivity checks.

Use multi-criteria analysis to weigh quantitative and qualitative criteria, score alternatives, standardize scores, compute total weighted scores, rank options, and test sensitivity with an example on municipal waste regulation.

Apply the standard cost model to quantify regulatory compliance costs from information obligations by price times quantity, revealing the annual administrative burden.

Explore social accounting matrix–based multiplier modelling (SAM) as an economy-wide tool for analyzing how policy changes ripple through GDP, jobs, and income via backward linkages and multipliers.

Explore computable general equilibrium modeling for economy-wide regulatory impact assessment, analyzing how policy shocks affect GDP, employment, and prices through a dynamic, data-rich baseline to new equilibrium.