Friday, April 19, 2013
Posted by D. Daniel Sokol
The OECD has published Evaluation of competition enforcement and advocacy activities: results of an OECD survey.
ABSTRACT: Is competition policy effective? What benefits does it bring to consumers? Governments and citizens are asking these questions, especially in Western countries where the recession is leading to strong budget cuts in the public sector. The OECD has surveyed 46 competition agencies to find out whether they assess the impact of their activities and what kind of information they provide to the government and the public. The survey has found out that all of them publish annual reports describing their activities and that almost half of them also provide, or will soon start to provide, an assessment of the likely savings that will accrue to consumers as a result of the interventions they have undertaken in the course of the year against cartels, abusive behaviours, and anticompetitive mergers. The survey has also ascertained that over half of agencies perform assessments of the effects of specific decisions a few years after these have been implemented to assess how effective these have been and whether any lessons can be learnt from them for future interventions.