Competition Law and Policy Indicators for the OECD countries

The aim of this paper is to construct indicators that measure the strength of policies aimed at preserving and promoting market competition by empowering antitrust and sectoral authorities. The indicators, which cover both general and sector-specific competition policies, extend previous OECD work covering economy-wide and sector-specific regulations that restrict competition and promote governance. It focuses on information for 2003 provided by a number of OECD sources. The results show relatively little variation in the overall indicator across countries, partly reflecting the convergence of competition policies across the OECD area over the past decade. However, inspection of individual elements reveals that enforcement efforts (both in terms of devoted resources and actually implemented sanctions) and policies in network industries vary considerably across countries. Thus, the main conclusion arising from this work is that member countries have been improving the general competition policy framework, but still have to fully implement the improved framework. Moreover, there remains a considerable scope for further progress in promoting competition in network industries.