The purpose of this paper is to derive an economist's research agenda from the European Union's new regulatory framwork for chemicals - REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals). With the idea of a precautionary principle, an economic analysis of REACH becomes twofold: Firstly, assessing the risks of a substance should happen at optimal cost. However, companies of different sizes produce not only at different marginal costs, but also do research at different marginal costs...