This chapter presents the main trends in resources of competition authorities, as well as discusses the evolution of their institutional setting. It presents some reasoning behind the changes in the structure of competition authorities in the past decade.
A Decade of OECD Competition Trends, Data and Insights
Abstract
The 2025 OECD Competition Trends report included a special chapter on the evolution of competition authorities’ resources, exploring potential reasons for the overall increasing trend for average budgets and staff dedicated to competition. It identified an overall increasing trend for average competition authority budgets and staff between 2015 and 2023. It explored how the recent evolution in competition policy may have led to a need for increased resources, how the overall trend masks a disparity in resource changes between authorities and how, for newer jurisdictions, resource growth may simply be the result of initial capability building.
This chapter will present general trends on competition authorities’ resources while limiting overlaps with the previous edition and will explore key trends in institutional settings over the ten-year period 2015-2024.
Note: Data based on the jurisdictions in the OECD CompStats database that provided data for each of the variables for the period 2015-2024.
Source: OECD CompStats database.
As Figure 5.2 shows, between 2015 and 2017, CompStats authorities dedicated, on average, 123 staff members to competition-related activities. In the last three years (2022-2024), this number increased to 145. The same trend holds for both OECD and Non-OECD jurisdictions with an overall increase of 17.8% (higher in OECD jurisdictions despite OECD authorities having more staff dedicated to competition). At jurisdictional level, the picture is mixed. While the staff working on competition increased in 46 jurisdictions in the past decade and stayed the same for 2 jurisdictions, it decreased in 17 jurisdictions during the same period.
Note: Data based on the 63 jurisdictions in the OECD CompStats database that provided data for competition staff for the period 2015-2024.
Source: OECD CompStats database.
Budgets in nominal and real terms also increased during the past ten years, with only 5% and 7% of the jurisdictions in the sample experiencing a decrease in their nominal and real budgets, respectively, over the decade. As indicated above, possible reasons for the overall increasing trend in resources were discussed in detail in the 2025 Competition Trends report. Figure 5.3 presents average real competition budgets for the periods 2015-17 and 2022-24 that revealed the aggregated increasing trend.
Note: Budgets are adjusted using exchange rates for 31 December 2015 and inflation rates per jurisdiction. Data based on the 56 jurisdictions in the OECD CompStats database that provided data for competition budget for the period 2015-2024.
Source: OECD CompStats database and World Bank.
The ten-year period 2015-2024 has seen the creation, independence or consolidation of multiple competition authorities, while others have undergone significant institutional changes to accommodate broader powers, duties or major changes to their regimes. A review of competition authorities’ mandates reveals that half of the authorities are exclusively dedicated to enforcing competition laws, while the other half also assume at least one more responsibility. Consumer protection is the most common one, followed by sectorial regulation. Some authorities had multiple powers since their conception, while others gained them with time (see Figure 5.4).
Source: OECD CompStats database and competition authorities’ websites.
While distinguishing between staff assigned exclusively to competition functions and those assigned to other tasks of the authority can be challenging - due to potential overlaps or the presence of transversal roles supporting multiple areas, competition authorities reported that, on average, between 45% and 48% of their total staff works on competition-related activities.1 This proportion remained relatively constant during the decade.
With digitalisation, there have also been relevant changes in authorities’ institutional settings and internal organisation to tackle new challenges and responsibilities. Box 5.1 highlights some of them.
The OECD’s 2023 background note on the Optimal Design, Organisation and Powers of Competition Authorities describes a set of skills that competition authorities increasingly demand. Among these, data and technology seem to have required changes to competition authorities’ structures in multiple jurisdictions. The note presents different alternatives that authorities have used to obtain these skills, including through hiring additional staff,1 training existent staff (in-house or through exchanges) and through using external expertise and international co-operation. Some of these alternatives impact structures within authorities more than others, as the integration of these new skills depend on existing organisational structures.
For example, competition authorities in Australia, Korea, Singapore and the United States, have developed programmes to train staff (economists and lawyers) on data science and AI, including specific trainings on topics such as digital evidence, blockchain, machine learning and cybersecurity. These trainings do not necessarily imply a structural change in the organisational structure of the authorities but improve the overall capacity of the authorities for tackling issues related to digitalisation.
Many authorities have chosen to centralise digital skills, through the creation of separate data units. The background note highlighted that in 2023, at least half of the OECD competition authorities had appointed a Chief Data Officer and around 40% had created specialised units.
Some examples are:
the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms and Data and Intelligence Branches
the Canadian Competition Bureau’s Digital Enforcement and Intelligence Branch
the French Competition Authority’s Digital Economy Unit
the Mexican Competition Authority’s Digital Markets and Market Intelligence Units
the Spanish Markets and Competition National Commission’s Economic Intelligence Unit
the United Kingdom’s CMA specialist DaTA (Data, Technology and Analytics) Unit.
1. Mainly data scientists and IT experts.
Source: OECD (2023[39]), The Optimal Design, Organisation and Powers of Competition Authorities, https://doi.org/10.1787/dea26a24-en; OECD (2025[1]), Algorithmic pricing and competition in G7 jurisdictions: Emerging trends and responses, https://doi.org/10.1787/f36dacf8-en.
Following these changes, there has been a range of OECD discussions and publications held on the structure of authorities, focusing on understanding their needs, powers and differences in internal organisation, as well as in gathering views on their optimal design. These include:
The Optimal Design, Organisation and Powers of Competition Authorities (OECD, 2023[39])
Independent Sector Regulators (OECD, 2019[40])
Independence of Competition Authorities - From Design to Practice (OECD, 2016[41])
Institutional Design of Competition Authorities (OECD, 2014[42]).
Overall, this research aims at explaining why resources have increased for authorities over the last ten years, particularly in combination with an observed increase in responsibilities and case complexity.
← 1. This is the average for the total period for all jurisdictions in the sample that reported total staff and staff dedicated to competition-related activities for all the ten years.