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...

Maintaining rapid economic growth depends increasingly on productivity gains, particularly in the service sector. Competition has an important role to play in achieving such gains. However, Korea’s development strategy has tended to weaken competition and has left a legacy of government...

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...

Following the deep recession in the early 1990s growth has been strong, but the scope for economic catch-up remains considerable and cross-country empirical evidence suggests that enhancing competition is an important means of achieving this. Structural reforms to strengthen competition in the...

This paper forms part of an OECD project which addressed the issue of the structure and change in the distribution systems of seven OECD countries. First, the paper discusses the role of distribution systems in the overall economic performance. Next, it gives an overview of the structure and...

Much scope remains to make regulation of product markets more conducive to competition ? notwithstanding progress in recent years ? with substantial benefits for consumer welfare, productivity and employment. While the general competition legislation and enforcement framework is mostly...

Environmental policies address wellbeing and sustainability objectives, affecting firm and household behaviour. A newly developed, cross-country composite proxy of environmental policy stringency (EPS) shows that stringency has been increasing across OECD countries over the past two decades....

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...

This paper examines the strength of product market competition and economic performance in Canada and discusses way in which the institutional framework governing competition policy could be improved. Competitive forces are comparatively strong and administrative and economic regulations...

Empirical work shows that competition is important for promoting economic growth. However, in Japan the promotion of competition has long been compromised by ministerial guidance and exemptions from the competition law. Thus, the level and growth of productivity have been low in many...