Evaluating the Impact of Regulation and Regulatory Policy – Towards Better Entrepreneurial Ecosystem. The Case of Poland

The relationship between regulatory framework and entrepreneurial activity can be of a three-fold nature: law can foster entrepreneurship, hinder entrepreneurship or be neutral in this respect. One of the tools to underpin the capacity of public policy makers to ensure that regulation achieves its objective is the regulatory impact assessment (RIA). OECD defines RIA as ‘a systemic approach to critically assessing the positive and negative effects of proposed and existing regulations and non-regulatory alternatives’. The objective of this paper is to examine the potential contribution of the regulatory impact analysis to building a more effective entrepreneurial ecosystem by reducing so-called ‘government failure’, in particular in Polish circumstances. The concern is not for specific legal provisions but the policy-making process, in which RIA is integrated. For this purpose, it reviews the RIA policies and practice in Poland and other OECD countries as well as in the EU. The methods used entail a qualitative document analysis on policy documents, in particular: legislative acts, guidelines and working papers issued by national, OECD and EU authorities, as well as reports and statistics in this field, in particular: the OECD Indicators of Regulatory Policy and Governance (iREG) to make cross-country comparisons and identify challenges in the effective implementation of RIA.