Product Market Regulation in the Non-Manufacturing Sectors of OECD Countries : Measurement and Highlights

Product market regulation in the non-manufacturing sectors of OECD countries: measurement and highlights This paper describes a new set of indicators that measure differences in the regulation of non-manufacturing sectors of OECD countries over the past three decades. The indicators focus on regulations that affect competitive pressures in areas where competition is economically viable and on the potential costs that these regulations entail for economic activities that use the output of regulated sectors as intermediate inputs in production. The paper illustrates the methodology used to compute the indicators and the patterns of product market regulation and regulatory reform that emerge from the analysis. The robustness of results is assessed in three ways: comparing the indicators to other available data covering the same areas; computing confidence intervals around the indicator values; and listing econometric results obtained by linking the indicators to measures of competition and economic performance.