Regulations of product markets serve legitimate objectives but, when ill-designed, can impose unnecessary restrictions on competition, and therefore on business dynamism, productivity and ultimately well-being. A recent update of the OECD’s Product Market Regulation indicator for Costa Rica...

This paper presents the latest edition of the OECD indicators of product market regulation (PMR), which measure regulatory stance in 35 OECD and 11 non-OECD countries. This update is based on a new methodology, which has been implemented to ensure that the PMR indicators maintain their relevance...

Over the past decade, an increasing number of firms have delegated pricing decisions to algorithms in consumer markets such as travel, entertainment, and retail; business markets such as digital advertising; and platform markets such as ride-sharing. This trend, driven primarily by the increased...

Digital markets have raised a number of new competition challenges. Ex-post competition policy appears not to be able to address them in their entirety and with the necessary speed. There is considerable consensus, among academics and policy-makers, that ex-ante regulatory policies are needed to...

A competition-friendly business regulatory environment is essential for the well-functioning of markets. It ensures that important policy goals are addressed, and market failures tackled. However, regulation can also create barriers to the entry and expansion of firms that may limit and distort...

Appropriately designed and implemented regulations are powerful tools for enhancing economic performance. A strong and sound regulatory framework can mitigate threats to health, safety, and the environment and address market imperfections. However, regulation can also create barriers to the...

Appropriately designed Product Market Regulation (PMR) is essential to enhance productivity, boost economic growth and increase welfare. Regulation is needed to address market failures and guarantee the health and safety of consumers. However, by limiting the entry and expansion of firms, a too...

A risk adjustment scheme (RAS) within social health insurance is designed to prevent insurers from engaging in risk selection. This paper shows that with cost differences between insurance plans as they exist between managed-care and traditional insurance, current RASs create incentives for...

We study the effect of different levels of information on two-sided platform profits—under monopoly and competition. One side (developers) is always informed about all prices and therefore forms responsive expectations. In contrast, we allow the other side (users) to be uninformed about prices...

Ranking have become increasingly popular on markets for study programs, restaurants, wines, cars, etc. This paper analyses the welfare implication of such rankings. Consumers have to make a choice between two goods of unknown quality with exogenous presence or absence of an informative ranking....