Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working papers in Transport Economics,
CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI)

No 2018:14: The precautionary principle and regulatory impact assessment: on the need for initial screening of hazards in regulatory work with examples from transport

Lena Nerhagen (), Sara Forsstedt and Karin Edvardsson
Additional contact information
Lena Nerhagen: CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI), Postal: Centrum för Transportstudier (CTS), Teknikringen 10, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Sara Forsstedt: The Swedish Transport Agency
Karin Edvardsson: The Swedish Transport Agency

Abstract: To achieve effective regulation, the OECD and the European Commission recommend the use of regulatory impact assessment (RIA). The full RIA process has however not been implemented in Sweden. There is for example a lack of established practices at the national level for the analysis of risk in regulatory work. Instead, soft law in the form of management by objective systems is guiding transport and environmental policy. These systems were introduced in the end of the 1990s following the international discussion on the precautionary principle. According to findings in other countries, policy making based on the precautionary principle may result in unexpected and unwanted consequences and therefore, based on a literature review and an assessment of current practices in transport regulation in Sweden, we suggest the use of an initial screening of hazards in regulatory work. We also apply the proposed method to four transport related case studies to illustrate how an initial assessment can provide the basis for an informed discussion on what hazards to counteract with regulation and on what grounds.

Keywords: precautionary principle; risk assessment; hazards; regulatory impact assessment

JEL-codes: R40

16 pages, September 10, 2018

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