This project will fund a fellowship placement for a mid-career researcher to work for 9 months with the better regulation teams at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Environment Agency (EA). 'Better Regulation' is the UK government's approach to developing regulation that achieves the desired outcome while avoiding unintended consequences and limiting costs for companies, consumers and the taxpayer. For Defra and the EA, the challenge is to improve, simplify, consolidate and even remove environmental regulations, while achieving at least equivalent outcomes for the environment, society and the economy. Academic research can offer useful guidance on how to tackle this challenge through providing evidence on the impacts, costs and benefits of various approaches to environmental regulation. The project will enable a researcher who specialises in company responses to environmental regulation to provide their expertise to Defra and the EA. During the fellowship the researcher will (1) collate research evidence on the relationships between environmental regulation, innovation, firm performance and economic growth, and (2) consult these and other government agencies to develop an action plan for future research collaboration on better regulation for a sustainable economy.