Government’s regulations are inevitable in certain aspects such as in the fields of resources management and land use. Qualified regulations bring social benefits, preventing excessive governmental expenditure and distortion of resource distributions. However, they could still cost in either direct or indirect way in the process of levying duties and restricting rights of citizens. In many cases, strong regulations may raise higher costs by worsening distortion of resource distribution or withering private sector. Therefore, Korean government has required Regulatory Impact Analysis for all administrative regulations since 1998 based on Framework Act on Administrative Regulations.

We evaluate the qualities of 287 regulatory impact analyses (RIA) out of 239 proposed bills registered in Regulatory Reform Committee(RRC) from April 2001 to December 2006. As the result, the regulatory impact analyses explain well the necessity of regulations by and large. However, many of them do not give full analysis for the alternatives, social benefits and costs, market failure, uncertainty of regulations, and execution and inspection of the regulations. Especially as the Ministry of Construction and Transportation(MoCT) regulatory impact analysis, which has drawn the most regulations, lack accurate measurement of costs and benefits, it is necessary to improve the system so as to have a qualified regulatory impact analyses.

Regulatory Impact Analysis may be regarded as an index to evaluate whether policy makers fully understand the effects of the regulations in the process of regulatory inspection. Therefore, the government should try to enhance more the quality of Regulatory Impact Analyses so that the process of regulatory inspection process could be introduced more transparently and adequately