|
Increased competition can improve a country’s economic performance, open business opportunities to its citizens and reduce the cost of goods and services throughout the economy. But numerous laws and regulations restrict competition in the marketplace. Many go further than necessary to achieve their policy objectives. Governments can reduce unnecessary restrictions by considering the use of methods in the OECD’s new “Competition Assessment Toolkit”. The Toolkit provides a general methodology for identifying unnecessary restraints and developing alternative, less restrictive policies that still achieve government objectives. One of the main elements of the Toolkit is a Competition Checklist that asks a series of simple questions to screen for laws and regulations that have the potential to unnecessarily restrain competition. This screen focuses limited government resources on the areas where competition assessment is most needed.
The materials can be used by governments in three main ways:
1. By government bodies engaged in development and review of policies, such as the competition authority in its evaluation of competitive impacts of regulations or by ministries that develop laws;
2. In an overall evaluation of existing laws and regulation (in the economy as a whole or in specific sectors); and
3. In the evaluation of draft new laws and regulations (for example, through regulatory impact assessment programs at the centre of government).
The Toolkit is designed for use in a decentralized fashion across government at both national and sub-national levels. The reason for designing the materials with this flexibility is that restrictions on competition can be implemented at many different levels of government and competition assessment can be helpful at all these levels. In fact, one of the most successful examples of pro-competitive reform occurred in a federal system when Australia implemented broad, pro-competitive reforms at both national and state level in the mid-1990s. Since that time, Australia has experienced strong economic performance, with high and steady growth that has raised Australia’s economy from a mid-level performer into one of the top performing OECD economies.
The Toolkit materials are simple enough for use by officials with no specialized economics or competition policy training. Institutionally, potential users could include ministries, legislatures, offices of government leaders, state governments and outside evaluators of policy. The materials were developed with the active participation of many OECD delegations. The Competition Assessment Toolkit is available in a number of languages in order to encourage broad consideration of the methods outlined and is currently available in Version 1.0. Comments are welcome on these materials in order to update them for future versions. They should be sent to: Sean.ENNIS@oecd.org.
The Toolkit is available in a number of languages:
|
