A decade of competition laws in Arab economies: a de jure and de facto assessment

The main objective of this paper is to provide an assessment of competition policy in a group of Arab countries. First, we construct indices for both competition policy rules and implementation assessing three categories: enforcement, advocacy, and institutional effectiveness. Second, it assesses the impact of competition policy rules (de jure) and implementation (de facto) on competition outcomes (fact-based and perception-based) using our constructed indices and the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. Findings show that our group of Arab countries has an average score related to the overall assessment of their competition legislations. Moreover, the de facto advocacy and the de jure institutional effectiveness have a significant effect on both fact-based and perception-based outcomes. Finally, the overall de jure competition index negatively affects market power, pointing out the importance of the deterrence effect that competition legislations can play.