The rebates, which consist in granting a lump sum discount to the ...

But there is another aspect of the efficiency to be take in account, that is the productive efficiency,that means that the desired outcome is reached by the lower amount of resources possible. Also inthis case the main tool in the analysis of regulatory process is the cost-benefit analysis.The efficiency criterion is difficult to purse, especially when the regulation affected fields in whichthe costs and benefits are not quantifiable in monetary terms. In these cases some scholarsquestioning about the soundness of the economic approach in general, and CBA in particular, to theregulatory process, because a cost-benefit analysis can support also inefficient regulations.The main critique is the incapacity of the regulatory impact assessment model to apply theeconomic approach in a correct way: at the foundation of the emergence and growing application ofthe Regulatory impact assessment there is the intention to solve other kinds of political problem thatare not coherent with the efficiency principle.In particular there are two different kinds of problem that the RIA could be able to explain and thatcan help to better understand the great success of RIA in the two main context of application of thiseconomic methods: RIA may be analyzed as a tool to solve the principal agent problem in US and alegitimating problem in the European contest.In the US the institutional context in which RIA has developed is designed in a way that lead to therise of a typical agency problem. The main features of this context are: delegation to regulatoryagencies, Presidential oversight, the presence of a special type of administrative law and judicialreview of the rulemaking.For Posner RIA is principally a device whose justification depends on its capacity to helpauthoritative institutions such as Congress, the presidency, and the courts to monitor subordinateinstitutions such as agencies 59 . Within the RIA process the request to the agency to implement acost-benefit analysis has not the scope to assure that regulation are efficient but instead to assurethat that elected officials maintain power over agency regulation. In fact, in the Posner view thecost-benefit analysis is able to change “a relationship of asymmetric information to one of full59 Posner E. , Controlling Agencies with Cost-Benefit Analysis: A Positive Political Theory Perspective, University ofChicago Law Review, v. 68, 200164