As in other sectors, competition in finance matters for allocative, productive and dynamic efficiency. Theory suggests, however, that unfettered competition is not first best given the special features of finance. I review these analytics and describe how to assess the degree of competition in...

Using a new firm-level dataset on private and listed firms from 20 countries, we document five stylized facts on market power in global markets. First, competition has declined around the world, measured as a moderate increase in average firm markups during 2000- 2015. Second, the markup...

We examine the extent to which regulations of entry and credit access are related to competition using data on 28 manufacturing sectors across 64 countries. A robust finding is that bureaucratic and costly entry regulations tend to hamper competition, as proxied by the price-cost margin, in the...

Does greater product market competition improve external competitiveness and growth? This paper examines this question by using country-and firm-level data for a sample of 39 sub-Saharan African countries over 2000-17, as well as other emerging market economies and developing countries, and...

This paper studies the macroeconomic effect and underlying firm-level transmission channels of a reduction in business entry costs. We provide novel evidence on the response of firms' entry, exit, and employment decisions. To do so, we use as a natural experiment a reform in Portugal that...

This paper reviews alternative approaches to measuring an economy''s cost competitiveness and proposes some new measures inspired by the economic theory of index numbers. The indices provide a theoretical benchmark for estimated real effective exchange rates, but differ from standard measures in...

This paper examines a country''s incentives for intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in a global trading environment. There is a time inconsistency problem intrinsic to IPR protection: ex ante strong protection is warranted to promote innovation, but once discovery takes place there is...

Conceptual ambiguities and statistical weaknesses hamper the assessment of external competitiveness. The term competitiveness, while applied extensively, is often imprecisely defined, which can result in analytical errors and mistaken policy advice. Furthermore, aggregate statistical measures of...

This paper studies market expectations of a devaluation of the Irish pound from 1987 to 1993 and relates them to the evolution of Ireland’s competitiveness over the same period. Changes in expectations of the currency’s devaluation can be explained largely by developments outside Ireland,...

India''s exports nearly tripled in the 1990s. Decomposing export growth shows that it has been driven by incumbent firms rather than the entry of new firms. By using a new panel on Indian firms and estimating a dynamic discrete-choice model of the firm''s decision to export, we find evidence...