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Competition Policy Trends and Economic Growth: Cross-National Empirical Evidence

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  • Joseph A. Clougherty

Abstract

Motivated by the general lack of empirical scholarship concerning the cross-national environment for competition policy, I present measures here of the overall resources dedicated to competition policy and the merger policy work-load for thirty-two antitrust jurisdictions over the 1992-2007 period. The data allow analysing a number of perceived trends in competition policy over the last two decades, and allow the generation of some factual insights concerning these trends: e.g., the budgetary commitment to competition policy in the cross-national environment for antitrust has substantially increased over this period; budgetary increases appear to be commensurate with increased antitrust workloads; yet, the role of economics does not appear to have substantially increased relative to the role of law. Moreover, I am also able to provide some evidence that budgetary commitments to antitrust institutions yield economic benefits in terms of improved economic growth: i.e., higher budgetary commitments to competition policy are associated with higher levels per-capita GDP growth. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG - (Entwicklungen in der Wettbewerbspolitik und Wirtschaftswachstum: Eine länderübergreifende empirische Untersuchung) Zu den Rahmenbedingungen für Wettbewerbspolitik gibt es kaum länderübergreifende empirische Forschung. Dieser Mangel soll in der vorliegenden Studie behoben werden, in der die Gesamtausgaben für Wettbewerbspolitik und die Arbeitsbelastungen von 32 Kartellbehörden im Zeitraum von 1992 bis 2007 untersucht werden. Die Daten bieten die Möglichkeit, eine Anzahl von erkennbaren Entwicklungen in der Wettbewerbspolitik innerhalb der letzten zwei Jahrzehnte zu analysieren. Folgende Erkenntnisse resultieren: die Gesamtausgaben für Wettbewerbspolitik sind länderübergreifend in der betrachteten Periode erheblich gestiegen; zur Etatsteigerungen sind auch die Arbeitsbelastungen der Behördenmitarbeiter entsprechend gestiegen; dabei hat die ökonomische Expertise jedoch im Vergleich zur juristischen offenbar nicht an Einfluss auf die Wettbewerbspolitik gewonnen. Außerdem kann gezeigt werden, dass die Bereitstellung von finanziellen Mitteln für die Wettbewerbbehörden eines Landes wirtschaftlichen Nutzen stiftet, was sich in einem höheren Wirtschaftswachstum gemessen als höheres BIP-Wachstum pro Kopf niederschlägt.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), Research Unit: Competition and Innovation (CIG) in its series CIG Working Papers with number SP II 2009-16.

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Length: 36 pages
Date of creation: Nov 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:wzb:wzebiv:fsiv2009-16

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Keywords: Competition Policy; Trends; Growth;

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