Towards Assessing Necessary Competence

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether non-prescriptive regulatory standards require greater competence from regulators than prescriptive standards, through a series of studies and experiments aimed at providing empirical evidence.

Contribution

It offers the first empirical assessment comparing competence demands of prescriptive versus non-prescriptive regulatory standards.

Findings

Preliminary evidence suggests non-prescriptive standards may demand higher regulator competence.

Experiments highlight key differences in regulatory requirements between approaches.

Further research needed to confirm and expand findings.

Abstract

We sketch a series of studies and experiments designed to provide empirical evidence about the truth or falsity of claims that non-prescriptive approaches to standards demand greater competence from regulators than prescriptive approaches require.