---
name: government-regulatory-impact-assessment
description: Use when asked to write or review a regulatory impact assessment (RIA) — an analysis of the likely costs, benefits, and effects of a proposed regulation before it is adopted, often legally required for significant rules — noting that the specific requirement, methodology, and review body vary by country and level of government (a US federal agency's analysis under executive-order review differs from a UK or EU regulatory impact assessment, a state or provincial requirement, or a local rule with no formal requirement at all).
---

# Government Regulatory Impact Assessment

A regulatory impact assessment analyzes the likely costs, benefits,
and other effects of a proposed regulation before it's adopted. Many
governments require one by law for significant or "major" rules, but
which rules trigger the requirement, who reviews the assessment, and
what methodology is expected all vary by country and level of
government — a US federal agency's analysis reviewed under executive
order, a UK or EU regulatory impact assessment, a state or provincial
requirement, and a local rule with no formal requirement at all are
each governed by different rules. This is distinct from an
[[environmental-impact-assessment]], which is specifically about a
project's environmental effects; a regulatory impact assessment covers
the broader economic and social effects of a proposed regulation of
any kind.

## Key components

- **A clearly stated problem** — what specific problem the regulation
  addresses, and why existing rules, market mechanisms, or voluntary
  measures don't already solve it, stated concretely enough to test
  whether the proposed rule is actually needed.
- **Quantified costs and benefits, with a stated methodology** —
  compliance costs, administrative costs, and expected benefits
  estimated with numbers where feasible, alongside the method and
  assumptions used to reach them, not bare assertions of magnitude.
- **Alternatives considered, including doing nothing** — a genuine
  comparison of realistically different approaches (a lighter-touch
  rule, a market-based mechanism, no new regulation at all) against the
  proposed option, not just variations on the preferred design.
- **A distributional analysis** — who specifically bears the costs and
  who receives the benefits, since compliance costs often fall on a
  different group than the one that benefits.
- **An implementation and enforcement plan** — how compliance will be
  monitored and enforced, and what it will cost the government to
  administer the rule once adopted.

## Why comparing against a genuine "do nothing" baseline matters

Any proposed rule can be made to look beneficial if it's compared only
to a worse hypothetical rule, rather than to the realistic alternative
of leaving the current rules in place. The baseline that actually
tests a regulation's case is what happens if nothing changes — current
compliance costs, current levels of the harm the rule targets, and
current enforcement gaps, projected forward without the new rule. An
assessment that skips this and instead compares the proposed rule only
to a strawman alternative, or to an even more burdensome version of
itself, cannot show whether the rule is actually worth adopting; it can
only show that it beats an option nobody was seriously considering.

## Common pitfalls

- **Costs and benefits asserted without a stated methodology** — a
  number given with no explanation of how it was derived, what data or
  assumptions fed into it, or what discount rate or time horizon was
  used, can't be checked, reproduced, or meaningfully disputed by
  reviewers or the public.
- **An alternatives section that only varies the preferred option** —
  comparing three versions of the same basic approach, rather than
  genuinely different mechanisms (including no new regulation),
  produces an analysis that was always going to recommend the option
  drafted first.
- **A single net-benefit number that glosses over distributional
  effects** — reporting that benefits exceed costs overall, without
  showing who bears the costs and who gets the benefits, hides cases
  where a regulation imposes real costs on one group to produce
  diffuse benefits for a different group entirely.
- **No real "do nothing" baseline** — comparing the proposed rule to a
  weaker strawman instead of to current rules left in place inflates
  the apparent case for adopting it.
- **Benefits assumed to fully materialize on the compliance timeline
  assumed** — treating projected benefits and the compliance schedule
  as certain, rather than stating the uncertainty and risk around both,
  overstates the rule's net case.

## Learn more

- [[environmental-impact-assessment]] for the parallel, narrower
  analysis focused specifically on a project's environmental effects
  rather than a regulation's broader economic and social effects.
- [[government-bill-drafting]] for the legislative text that may
  authorize or require the regulation this assessment analyzes.
- [[government-public-comment-response]] for responding to public input
  received on the proposed rule after the assessment is published.
- [[policy-brief]] for summarizing an assessment's findings for a
  decision-maker who has to decide whether to proceed.