This is the first report to look across the OECD membership at how regulatory impact analysis is actually designed and carried out.

Laws and regulations affect the daily lives of businesses and citizens. High-quality laws promote national welfare and growth, while badly designed laws hinder growth, harm the environment and put the health of citizens at risk. This report analyses practices to improve the quality of laws ...

This set of guidelines provides the measures by which governments can implement or advance regulatory reform.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the crucial role regulation plays in the economy and society, but has also exposed gaps in domestic and international rule-making that have cost lives and money. The 2021 Regulatory Policy Outlook, the third in the series, maps country efforts to improve regulatory quality in line with the 2012 OECD Recommendation on Regulatory Policy and Governance, and shares good regulatory practices that can help close the gaps.

This report is part of the series OECD Best Practice Principles for Regulatory Policy produced under the auspices of the OECD Regulatory Policy Committee. As with other reports in the series, it extends and elaborates on principles highlighted in the 2012 Recommendation of the Council on Regulatory Policy and Governance.

This publication presents recent OECD papers on risk and regulatory policy. They offer measures for developing, or improving, coherent risk governance policies.

Regulatory impact assessment (RIA) is the main instrument used by governments and regulators to appraise the likely effects of their policy proposals. This pioneering Handbook provides a comparative and comprehensive account of this tool, situating it in the relevant theoretical traditions and scrutinizing its use across countries, policy sectors and policy instruments. Comprising six parts, university researchers, international consultants and practitioners working in international organizations examine regulatory impact assessment from many perspectives, which include: • research traditions in the social sciences • implementation, regulatory indicators and effects • tools and dimensions such as courts and gender • sectoral case studies including environment, enterprise and international development • international diffusion in the European Union (EU), Americas, Asia and developing countries • appraisal, training and education. With its wealth of detail and lessons to be learned, the Handbook of Regulatory Impact Assessment will undoubtedly be of great value to practitioners and scholars working in governance, political science and socio-legal studies.