A Primer on Regulatory Budgets

A new and novel approach to controlling regulatory costs is the concept of the regulatory budget. This concept would require that governments account for regulatory expenditures in a similar way to fiscal expenditures. This article argues that there are analogies between fiscal and regulatory budgets as they both divert resources from the private sector, albeit by different policy instruments. Given that budgeting is universally used to manage fiscal resources, the article outlines the pros and cons of developing regulatory budgets to manage regulatory resources. JEL classification: H300, H610.