A regulatory sandbox is a legal institution that enables business entities to operate in a safe laboratory legal environment to experiment with innovative technologies, products, services or approaches for a specified period of time in a designated part of a sector or area under regulatory supervision. This paper looks at the problem of sandboxes from two perspectives: that of an economist and that of a legal theorist. The authors aim to analyse the overt and covert functions that sandboxes (are to?) actually serve in a pluralistic regulatory system and in the economy. They seek answers to the question of whether regulatory sandboxes are a viable opportunity to support economic innovation and a chance for better quality regulation in the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.