Abstract

After more than two decades from its first implementation, Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) is increasingly seen as a key tool to boost competitiveness and sustainable development in industrialised economies. International best practices such as the US and UK RIA models have started producing encouraging results after years of often disappointing evidence, whereas the ambitious European model of integrated impact assessment, introduced in 2003, still exhibits important flaws. In Italy, after years of silence, regulatory impact assessment is currently being re-launched with strong political input. This paper offers a helicopter view of the results achieved in major international best practices; a scorecard analysis of the quality of impact assessment performed so far by the European Commission; and some policy recommendations for effectively introducing regulatory impact assessment in Italy.