'RATIONAL' SOCIAL REGULATION AND COMPLIANCE COST ASSESSMENT.

This article focuses on the promotion made by the British government regarding the use of compliance cost assessment in order to quantify the impact of business of proposed new regulations. The article considers the nature of rationality in social regulation and forces which may drive regulation towards irrationality. This article describes the evolution of compliance cost assessment as a means of arresting such tendencies, contrasting it with the requirement of regulatory impact assessment imposed upon U.S. federal regulatory agencies. It analyzes the practice and processes of compliance cost assessment and concludes with some evaluation of its role and efficacy. What has emerged is very different from the cost-benefit analysis required under the American system of regulatory impact assessment in terms of the scope of the analysis, its institutional setting and its formal status within the legislative process.