An Economic Instrument to Evaluate the (Pro)Competitive Nature of Industries : The Aggregate Index of Competitive Pressure

In this paper we propose an economic tool that can be used to evaluate the (pro)competitive nature of different national industries. The first part of the paper presents the theoretical foundation on which the Aggregate Index of Competitive Pressure (AICP) rests and the methodology to compute it. The results of applying this composite index for a set of 20 industries of the Romanian economy are presented next, along with a discussion on the robustness of these results. In our view, AICP is a proactive instrument that can prove useful to the competition authority, both in its attempts to constantly monitor various industries of the economy, and in its internal decision making process regarding institution’s resource allocation