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The OECD Indicators of Product Market Regulation (PMR) are a comprehensive and internationally-comparable set of indicators that measure the degree to which policies promote or inhibit competition in areas of the product market where competition is viable. They measure the economy-wide regulatory and market environments in 30 OECD countries in (or around) 1998, 2003 and 2008, and in another 4 OECD countries (Chile, Estonia, Israel and Slovenia) as well as in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa around 2008; they are consistent across time and countries.

The indicators cover formal regulations in the following areas:

• state control of business enterprises;
• legal and administrative barriers to entrepreneurship;
• barriers to international trade and investment.

The original 1998 work on the PMR indicators and the 2003 update are described in
OECD Economics Department Working Paper No. 226, "Summary indicators of product market regulation with an extension to employment protection legislation" and OECD Economics Department Working Paper No. 419, "Product market regulation in OECD countries: 1998 to 2003".

The PMR indicator system was updated and substantially revised in 2008. The revised "integrated PMR" which replaces the previous economy-wide  PMR indicator integrates sectoral information to a much larger extent than in the past and adopts a simpler and more transparent aggregation technique. The 2008 update and revision of the PMR indicators is described in detail in the OECD Economics Department Working Paper No 695, No 695, "Ten years of product market reform in OECD countries – insights from a revised PMR indicator”.

Further work on the indicators was undertaken in 2011 to move from using most favoured nation tariffs to effectively applied tariffs and to incorporate the 2010 update of the FDI restrictiveness index. The latter is described in detail in the OECD Working Paper on International Investment No. 2010/3, "OECD's FDI restrictiveness index: 2010 update".

Regulatory data for several new OECD and non-member countries have been used to analyse the link between regulation and economic growth in these countries. The results are presented in the OECD Economics Department Working Paper No. 799, "Product market regulation: extending the analysis beyond OECD countries".

The values for these economy-wide PMR indicators can be accessed via the OECD Stats Browser or by downloading an Excel file of the full set of PMR indicators. Please cite the database as: OECD (2011), Product Market Regulation Database, www.oecd.org/economy/pmr.

Integrated PMR indicator (1998, 2003, 2008)

• via the OECD Stats Browser
• Complete set of indicators in Excel format.
• Short description of the indicator construction

The main sources of information used to construct the PMR indicators are the responses to the Regulatory Indicators Questionnaire provided by national governments in 1998, 2003 and 2008 and data published by the OECD and other international organisations. All these data have been extensively checked by OECD and government experts. The regulatory data used to construct the PMR indicators can be downloaded in an excel file.

Users of the data must be aware that they may no longer fully reflect the current situation in fast reforming countries.

• 2007 OECD Regulatory Indicators Questionnaire
• 2003 OECD Regulatory Indicators Questionnaire
• 1998 OECD Regulatory Indicators Questionnaire
• the regulatory data used to construct the PMR indicators. 

Related Documents

Indicators of Product Market Regulation Homepage