The far-reaching regulatory activity in which the financial sector has been involved in recent years has been attracting increased attention to the expected costs and benefits of such regulation; measures undertaken in response to the financial crisis have made these issues even more topical.
Regulatory impact assessment (RIA) has become a widespread practice for the international institutions and for the regulators in the main developed countries. RIA has recently been adopted at the Bank of Italy, proving to be a useful tool not only to refine the rules being adopted, but also to strengthen the interaction with the public during the consultation phase.
The publication of the RIA Guidelines provides a tool for codifying the process of the analysis; with the help of some exemplifications drawn from RIAs conducted so far, this document provides a key for the interpretation of the analyses and helps to clarify the underlying logical steps.
