Froud et al's monograph examines the operation of a range of economic appraisal techniques in the law-making process in the UK, the US and the European Union. The book reports the findings from an interdisciplinary study which brought together researchers from accounting, economics and law. The monograph consists of 12 chapters which are not attributed to specific authors. The book's main focus are five case studies. Four of these deal with compliance cost assessments in the UK (chs 6, 7, 8 and 9) and one of them (ch 5) discusses the application of the economic appraisal technique of the EU Commission, the fiche d'impact, to the negotiation of an EC Directive. Compliance cost assessment (CCA) was introduced in the UK in 1985 through an administrative direction by the then Conservative government.' It required all government departments to produce systematic assessments of the predicted costs to business of new regulatory proposals enshrined in statutory instruments. From 1992 onwards CCA was obligatory also for parliamentary Bills and EC Draft Directives.2 In 1996, CCA was reformed to take into account costs incurred by the administration. Also the benefits from a measure were to be considered (albeit, separately from its costs) and the technique was renamed regulatory appraisal (RA). The empirical part of Froud et al's research project does not examine the development of RA. Furthermore, the project was finished before the election of the Labour Government in May 1997 which reformed economic appraisal and renamed it Regulatory Impact Asssessment (RIA). RIA provides for a cost-benefit analysis of any new EC, primary, secondary legislation, consultation papers and informal proposals for regulation.3 Despite these changes, Froud et al's findings on CCA are still important, as will be shown in this article, and the chapters on economic appraisal in the EU (ch 4), regulatory impact analysis in the US (ch 11) and cost-benefit analysis in the UK (ch 10) remain largely unaffected. This review article will critically examine Froud et al's research by offering some criticisms of the book and by questioning the terms of their analysis. The authors locate economic appraisal in the context of deregulation, which is usually perceived as facilitating a shift towards more market-based forms of governance.