# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank Cyril Benoit (Researcher at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po, Paris), Andreja Marušić, and Valentina Saltane (Senior Private Sector Specialists at the World Bank) for reviews and comments on earlier versions of this paper. The authors would also like to thank officials from Jordan’s Legislation and Opinion Bureau for their invaluable support in facilitating access to and understanding of publicly available legislative data for the Kingdom of Jordan. The authors further like to thank Ahmed Al Shaibani and Muhammad Bilal for outstanding research assistance. The research underpinning this paper was made possible by the financial support of the World Bank.

# 1. INTRODUCTION

Legislation is a central tool for governments and policy makers to implement their agendas and manage the behavior of individuals, firms, and the state. Be it laws or regulations, both can directly affect investment, spending, competitiveness, and growth (Voermans 2009). Yet, for positive effects to materialize, high-quality legislation is required (Mousmouti 2012, Maler 2001). High-quality legislation should support competition, ease legislative and regulatory burdens, provide fair market conditions, and increase citizen satisfaction (Mousmouti 2012, Voermans 2009). High-quality legislation guides the behavior of individuals and firms as intended by the policy maker by being clear, precise and unambiguous; it thereby achieves the intended policy goal while being financially prudent (Maler 2001, Xanthaki 2010, Mousmouti 2012). Efficient laws and regulations rely on the ‘use of minimum costs for the achievement of optimum benefits of the legislative action’ (Xanthaki 2010, p.115). One hallmark of high-quality laws and regulations is _legislative predictability._ Legislative predictability refers to a predictable legislative environment that consists of laws and regulations with no to little modifications in the short-run and limited (repeated) modifications in the mid-term. High-quality legislation that is clear, precise and unambiguous, should result in few ex-post modifications shortly after their introduction and thus display higher legislative predictability. Lowquality legislation, in contrast, tends to be complex, imprecise, and ambiguous, increasing confusion among firms and individuals and requiring more short-term changes to correct for mistakes. Thus, legislative predictability will be lower when legislation is of lower quality.

Legislative predictability has come to the fore in the midst of frequent and lasting crises and an ever more complex socio-economic environment. Policy makers, thus, face pressures towards faster lawmaking, while maintaining high-quality laws and regulations. Legislation is increasingly perceived as a “commodity on a time-to-market clock” (Voermans et al 2015, p. 283). Yet, these trends towards increasing legislative speed can compromise legislative quality. In turn, lower-quality legislation can hinder effective and efficient policy implementation, create confusion among citizens and firms, and result in high degrees of uncertainty (Xanthaki 2010).

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