Regulatory Impact Assessment: A survey of selected developing and emerging economies

Regulatory impact assessment (RIA) involves a systematic appraisal of the social, economic and environmental impacts of proposed regulations and other kinds of policy instruments before they are adopted. A vast amount of academic literature in the last decade has charted the diffusion of RIA in OECD countries and EU member states. However, relatively little is known about the extent to which RIA has been adopted and implemented in developing countries. The last research attempting to shed light on this issue over a decade ago found that a number of were beginning to apply some form of regulatory assessment but that its development was at an early stage. Since then RIA has become almost universally adopted in OECD and EU member states as well as promoted as a tool for good (regulatory) governance in developing countries by international donors and organizations such as OECD, the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group (IFC). What, then, is the extent of RIA adoption and implementation in these countries today? This working paper addresses this question through a survey of RIA in 14 developing and emerging economies based on documentary analysis as well as semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. The survey explores topics such as the legal and institutional framework of RIA, organizational capacity, and use of tools and methods (e.g. Cost Benefit Analysis). The results suggest that while an increasing number of developing countries have made efforts to introduce RIA in their decision making processes, these efforts have not yet led to a sustainable RIA system which significantly contributes to the good regulatory governance of these countries

Smart Services Conditions and Preferences: An Analysis of Chinese and German Manufacturing Markets

Smart Services are individually configurable bundles of physically delivered services and digital services, based on data collected in the Internet of Things. Due to the increasing equipment of products with sensing technologies and communication modules, Smart Services become more and more important to manufacturing companies. Since German and Chinese manufacturing firms possess a strong trading relationship, it is important to understand the market conditions and customer requirements of the two country markets in order to develop and provide Smart Services successfully. In this context, our paper provides a first overview about these aspects, based on literature analysis and a small qualitative survey among four Chinese and four German experts

Knowledge Brokerage for Impact Assessment of Land Use Scenarios in Inner Mongolia, China: Extending and Testing the FoPIA Approach

While land serves numerous societal functions and contributes to sustainable development, it is often unclear how these functions are affected by political decisions and common drivers of land use change, such as economic development, climate change and demographic change. This study evaluates alternative land use scenarios in reference to a rural region of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (China), where various processes and decisions have historically triggered unsustainable development. The scientifically tested “Framework for Participatory Impact Assessment (FoPIA)” method is developed further to address specific features of the case study region, and its function as a knowledge-brokerage (KB) tool is evaluated. Three scenarios are developed and analysed in expert workshops. “Land intensification: Agriculture” and “Land intensification: Mining” scenarios are found to have mainly negative environmental and social effects and positive economic impacts, while the “Environmental conservation and tourism” scenario is found to more positively affect all three sustainability dimensions. Assessments of methodological phases show that the FoPIA primarily serves to establish the KB process and that the framework particularly benefits from early examinations of scientific results by policy makers

Sparen, wenn das Geld gerade so zum Leben reicht: Das Risiko des Abbruchs privater Altersvorsorge unter den Rahmenbedingungen von Riester-Förderung und Sozialgesetzbuch II

In Germany, supplementary old-age provision has become important for persons covered by the statutory pension insurance scheme. To promote private provision especially of low-earners the state provides financial support within the framework of the ’Riester pension". Furthermore, the Social Code II ensures that the majority of persons claiming basic income support for needy jobseekers do not have to use their private old-age savings for maintaining a livelihood. This study analyses to what extent these measures have helped stabilise the saving processes in low income groups. Based on the third wave of the household survey PASS we find that the protection rules in the Social Code II have so far played a rather minor role. Decreasing incomes, however, turn out to be of great importance for cancelling old-age pension contributions. Moreover, there is circumstantial evidence that the Riester subsidy particularly enables persons with low income to continue saving for retirement