How do laws and regulations affect competitiveness
The role for regulatory impact assessment
The impacts of laws and regulations on competitiveness have strong implications for
OECD economies, as they can lead to unforeseen negative externalities and considerable
regulatory costs for businesses and citizens. Nevertheless, the use of regulatory
policy to assess the impacts of regulations on competitiveness has seldom been examined.
This paper fills this gap by reviewing OECD members’ regulatory impact assessment
(RIA) frameworks and the extent to which the competitiveness effects are currently
appraised. It categorises regulatory impacts on competitiveness into three strongly
interrelated components – cost competitiveness, innovation, and international competitiveness
– and builds upon the OECD’s expertise to examine how regulations affect each component
of competitiveness in turn. In doing so, the paper proposes a more complete structure
that regulators can use to define and assess the competitiveness impacts of regulation
as part of their RIA processes framework.
Published on February 03, 2021
In series:OECD Regulatory Policy Working Papersview more titles