What is the quality of the regulatory impact analysis prepared by Brazilian regulatory agencies?

Abstract

The regulatory impact analysis - RIA is a tool that seeks to identify the regulatory policy’s relevant impacts to support decision-making. Its use has become mandatory in Brazil, but no studies have investigated whether the quality of the analysis has reached the desired level in the country. Thus, the objective of this research was to evaluate the quality of RIAs carried out by Brazilian federal regulatory agencies. An instrument was developed and applied with 50 criteria for quality assessment in a set of 21 RIAs. The results indicated the good quality of the RIAs in some aspects, such as the definition of problems and objectives, but they pointed out weaknesses in others, such as the analysis of impacts and the comparison of alternatives. As an agenda for future studies, investigations of hypotheses and factors that may explain the absence of a quality standard for RIA in the country were proposed.