OBEYING THE RULES - ACCOUNTING FOR REGULATORY COMPLIANCE COSTS IN THEUNITED-KINGDOM

The U.K. Government has embarked on a deregulatory programme aimed at ''liberating'' business from, inter alia, onerous regulatory complianc e costs. In doing so it has developed and utilized an accounting-based technique known as Compliance Cost Assessment (CCA). This paper descr ibes and analyses this technique, and demonstrates that CCA has been u sed as a perceived rational tool to counter regulatory growth and to p rivilege certain interests in society. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Sci ence Ltd.