Assessment of competition level and competition environment:a review of methods and survey results in 2014-2016

In the recent years in the Russian state policy formation special attention has been paid to the promotion of competition development. An increasing interest in this issue induces the demand for the methodology of assessment of competition level and competition environment. Although there is a wide range of indicators describing the level of competition and its intensity and a broad spectrum of methods for evaluation of these indicators, there is no unified methodology for the purposes of state competition policy formation in Russia. The article is devoted to the review of existing approaches to evaluation of competition level and competition environment applied by different researchers and by antitrust authorities, their pros and cons. It also presents an alternative methodology that is based on the survey of business community representatives and that combines the main ways to the competition assessment. The proposed methodology has been tested by the Analytical Center for the Government of the Russian Federation in 2014-2016 and the results of the testing are also described in the article. This method of competition evaluation can be used for assessments both at the country level of the Russian Federation and at the level of the Russian regions.