While the single market has largely been achieved for the EU market for goods, the services sector has lagged behind. This has resulted in sluggish activity, low productivity growth, high prices, that show a wide dispersion and relatively high inflation in this sector. Both the OECD product...

Competition in product markets has been found to be an important determinant of economic performance in developed and developing countries. This paper uses the OECD's indicators of product market regulation (PMR) to assess the extent to which India's regulatory environment is supportive of...

Regulatory reform efforts in a broad range of industries have resulted in increased importance of competitive forces as a means to allocate resources and improve economic efficiency. A number of indicators suggest that such forces have been stronger in the United States than in most other OECD...

This paper discusses the current state of product market competition in Iceland, including the legal and regulatory framework, and suggests directions for further improvement. Given the size of the economy, efficiency considerations dictate high concentration in many markets, and preventing...

An unprecedented “boom and bust” investment cycle occurred in the high-tech industries at the turn of the century, in particular in the telecommunications sector. Regulatory reforms and technological innovation fuelled expectations of robust growth in traffic, revenue and earnings....

This paper presents a database on indicators of product market regulations and employment protection legislation for most of the OECD countries and illustrates a methodology for aggregating these detailed indicators into summary indicators of the strictness of regulations. The summary indicators...

This paper examines problems of entry, exit and competition in Ukrainian product markets. It finds that Ukraine still has too little of all three, and that exit mechanisms, in particular, function poorly. Since impediments to entry and exit are largely the product of excessive and ill...

The paper uses an original international database on regulation, market structure and performance in the telecommunications industry to investigate the effects of entry liberalisation and privatisation on productivity, prices and quality of service in long-distance (domestic and international)...

This paper describes trends in product market regulation in OECD countries over the period 1998 to 2003. The analysis is based on summary indicators of product market regulation that measure the degree to which policies promote or inhibit competition. The results suggest that regulatory...

This paper assesses the implications of past and ongoing reforms in OECD product markets for the labour productivity gap, a key component of cross-country differences in GDP per capita. After a brief review of the theoretical literature, we bring together the results obtained in some of our...