Regulatory reform

Good governance is a building block for the performance of regulators, including civil aviation authorities. This paper reports the results of a mapping of governance arrangements across 29 civil aviation authorities in Latin American and Caribbean countries, with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s South American and North American, Central American and Caribbean regions. Applying the methodology of the OECD Indicators on the Governance of Sector Regulators, the results provide a birds-eye view of the independence, accountability and scope of action of participating authorities. This paper explains the indicator methodology, summarises key data points, and presents high-level take aways.

This paper presents a stocktaking of standalone chapters in trade agreements dedicated to good regulatory practices and international regulatory co-operation. While standalone regulatory policy chapters in trade agreements remain a new development, they signal countries’ increasing interest in elevating the visibility and ambition of regulatory policy, in line with their commitments in the 2012 OECD Recommendation of the Council on Regulatory Policy and Governance and the 2005 APEC-OECD Integrated Checklist on Regulatory Reform. Still, the level of ambition of these chapters varies widely depending on the state of play of regulatory policy in trading partners. By comparing the main substantive and structural features of these chapters, this stocktaking aims to inform the development of similar chapters in future trade agreements.

This innovative book combines results from research conducted in Colombia about how communications services consumers make consumption choices with OECD expertise in regulatory policy, behavioural economics, and data analytics, in order to help improve the consumer protection regime in Colombia. It focuses on the types of incentives that should be provided to change both provider and user behaviour, and considers where appropriate regulatory interventions may be needed to ensure that these incentives are realised. This work supports the Communications Regulator of Colombia in redesigning its consumer protection regime. This effort has refocused the regulatory framework from 'protecting rights' towards making the market function best; this involves encouraging the providers to improve the quality of their services and rates offered in the market and to foster a better understanding of what is being offered and how. The book also makes specific recommendations on possible follow-up experiments to test some of the possible solutions to help communications services consumers better understand the information provided by service operators.

Measuring regulators’ performance can strengthen the contribution of regulatory policies to sustainable growth and development. While measuring a regulator’s performance is a fundamental function of a 'world class' regulator, it is challenging, starting with the definition of what should be measured and including the attribution of outcomes to regulators’ actions and the availability of robust and evidence-based evaluation methodologies. This review is the first application of an innovative methodology that helps regulators address these challenges and improve the way in which they assess their own performance. The mehtodology puts performance measurement in the wider context of governance arrangements of economic regulators. The review finds a close link between the independence of the regulator and performance. It also stresses the importance of focusing on regulatory tools and processes and measuring their quality to help improve performance. It highlights the need to define clear goals to develop output and outcome indicators that can be actionable and useful for the regulator. The review provides a roadmap for strengthening performance assessment by Colombia's communications regulator and is expected to help advance the better regulation agenda of other Colombian regulators and economic regulators of OECD members.