[citation needed] Since the federal government began calculating the economic impact of the RFA in 1998, the law is estimated to have saved small entities (and the US economy as a whole) more than $200 billion[1] without undermining the broad purposes of the regulations it affects.

On August 1, 1977, Senators Gaylord Nelson (D, WI) and John Culver (D, IA) introduced the earliest version of the Regulatory Flexibility Act in Congress.

Their bill directed federal agencies to actually seek less burdensome regulations for small businesses, and assigned responsibility to the new Office of Advocacy to monitor compliance.

Like later versions of the RFA, the 1977-8 legislation targeted the basic law governing the conduct of all federal agencies, called the Administrative Procedure Act.

Both Senators Nelson and Culver were noted environmentalists, so they adapted an approach used earlier in the National Environmental Policy Act.

In the fall of 1979, as the Regulatory Flexibility Act moved forward in Congress, President Jimmy Carter took steps to advance some of the goals of the legislation administratively.

The final conference report noted that "during the past decade, the growth of government regulation has been explosive, particularly in such areas as affirmative-action hiring, energy conservation, and protection for consumers, workers, and the environment.

The White House Conference recommendations lent significant impetus for the passage, in September 1980, of the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA).

Agencies must: The RFA has added important elements of management oversight, predictability and transparency to the federal regulatory process.

[9] One of the more ambitious aspects of the RFA is its requirement that federal agencies review all of their existing regulations over a period of ten years and revise those that are duplicative, excessively burdensome, or no longer necessary.

Although this RFA provision (Section 610 of the Act) is often ignored by agencies, a plan for this review of existing regulations is likewise published with the unified agendas.

Agencies are required to assess the impacts of their proposed and final rules on small entities, and to select less burdensome alternatives—or explain why they cannot do so.

Regulations' effects on the economic environment for competition also concerned President George H. W. Bush, whose 1992 message in the annual small business report noted: "My Administration this year instituted a moratorium on new federal regulations to give federal agencies a chance to review and revise their rules.

And we are looking at ways to improve our regulatory process over the long term so that regulations will accomplish their original purpose without hindering economic growth."

In early September 1993, Vice President Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government also urged that the Regulatory Flexibility Act be strengthened by permitting judicial review of agency compliance.

[11] The order required federal agencies to analyze their major regulatory undertakings and to take action to ensure that these regulations achieved the desired results with minimal burden on the U.S. economy.

SBREFA also mandated that the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) convene small business advocacy review panels to consult with small entities on regulations expected to have a significant impact on them, before the regulations were published for public comment.

[16][17] Also, the law reaffirmed the authority of the chief counsel for advocacy to file amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs in appeals brought by small entities from agency final actions.

The Executive Order requires federal agencies to establish written procedures and policies explaining how they measure the impact of their regulatory proposals on small entities and to vet those policies with the Office of Advocacy; to notify the Office of Advocacy before publishing draft rules expected to have a significant small business impact; and to consider the Office of Advocacy's written comments on proposed rules and publish a response with the final rule.

These additional requirements permit the Office of Advocacy to work closely with federal agencies in considering the impacts of proposed regulations on small entities.

Advocacy, in turn, developed a Regulatory Alerts webpage at http://www.sba.gov/advo/laws/law_regalerts.html to call attention to important pending regulations that may affect small entities.

This subject is also being discussed within the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The World Bank has contributed significantly to the global dialogue on SME regulatory burdens through its annual "Doing Business" surveys.

On behalf of 46 nations that participated in its drafting, the OECD's Bologna Charter on SME Policies[29] called for a regulatory environment that "...does not impose undue burdens on SMEs and is conducive to entrepreneurship, innovation and growth," and agreed on "benchmarking the effectiveness of SME policies, regulatory environment and performance, based on data and statistics collected at national and sub-national level, including on electronic commerce."

An APEC / ASEAN policy document identifies Australia, Mexico, Singapore, Japan, and Taiwan as the groups' leaders in SME regulatory reform, and sets forth a framework for further progress in the region through 2014.

[47] Given this growing support for the flexible regulatory treatment of smaller enterprises by both transnational organizations and individual nations, and perhaps international competitiveness considerations, it seems likely that such approaches will spread further in coming years.