The use of economics in public policy in the form of ex ante Regulatory Impact Analysis RIA is strongly advocated by international organizations such as the OECD and the World Bank. In the US and the EU hundreds of RIAs are produced every year to justify public intervention in the form of regulation. But reality shows that in many other countries the adoption and implementation of this tool has been patchy at best. At the same time the economics used in RIA is heavily challenged by scholarly dev