Law is one of the primary determinants of market performance and can be a powerful tool for implementing policy. If there is no rational evaluation of how a rule functions and what its impacts are, rational policy development is not possible. However, conducting a comprehensive analysis of the legal environment for food marketing in a particular country could be a huge task. In theory it would be necessary to examine: each relevant legal rule, how the rule is implemented and enforced, how it interacts with other parts of the regulatory system (e.g. existing market customs and practices and economic and political forces), how it is perceived by the people subject to it, and the effects it produces on human behaviour and hence the performance of the various aspects of the food marketing system. Therefore, in practice it will usually be necessary to restrict the analysis to the most significant aspects of the regulatory system (see section 4 above).
Annex 2 sets out a methodology for analysing relevant laws in a particular socio-economic context which is based on the recognition that the legal, institutional and economic aspects of a regulatory system for food marketing are inseparable. It is intended to give policy makers and lawyers a framework for identifying the key legal features of the regulatory system to enable them to make informed decisions about how to improve its functioning in order to meet specific policy objectives. It also seeks to identify the most important economic implications of a rule in terms of cost to the participants (compliance costs) and costs to the state or other authorities, in implementing and enforcing the law.
