Institutional design is a critical component of competition law and policy. Good competition laws on the books are meaningless without well-designed institutions to enforce them.
At the same time, many different models exist and working out the optimal institutional design is complex since the menu is vast, many agencies have found success with very different designs, and what works well in one jurisdiction may not always work well in another.
Against this backdrop, many jurisdictions have recently made, or have considered making, changes to their institutional design, which may provide useful insights. For example, a number of jurisdictions have created new “multifunction” agencies by merging the competition agency with the authorities responsible for other economic policy functions, such as consumer protection, sector regulation or public procurement control. Other jurisdictions have made changes designed to enhance the independence of the competition authority from government.
In December 2014 and June 2015, the OECD held two roundtables on "Changes in institutional design of competition authorities" to learn more about existing experiences and to explore the scope for possible OECD future work in this domain.
This page contains all related materials.
