Evaluation of competition interventions

When competition authorities evaluate their enforcement and advocacy activities, they are not only showing the effectiveness of their work but providing transparency and accountability of the use of public resources. The OECD is committed to supporting competition authorities in assessing the impact of their activities.

Focus

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Key messages

Competition authorities, like other public bodies, need to regularly report about their activities to government, the public and other stakeholders typically on an annual basis.

Increasingly, such authorities are interested in providing measures of the expected 'impact' on consumers of their decisions. These measurements allow them to concisely present the contribution that their work brings to society.

To help competition authorities in quantifying the value of their work, the OECD has developed a simple methodology that authorities can refer to when carrying out an impact assessment of their activities. This methodology, together with examples and suggestions on how to present its results, are illustrated in the Guide on competition impact assessment.

Guide for competition authorities to assess the impact of their activities

Guide pour aider les autorités de la concurrence à évaluer l'impact attendu de leurs activités

Guía para ayudar a las autoridades de competencia a evaluar el impacto esperado de sus actividades

The challenge faced by competition agencies when enforcing competition law is enormous. With limited information, resources and time, these agencies must evaluate the likely competitive impact of unprecedented changes in how markets operate and whether their interventions/non-interventions would lead to better market outcomes. The periodic ex-post analysis of the actual effects of enforcement decisions a few years after these are taken is a tool that can help agencies better understand the impact of their interventions and to improve future decision making.

Some competition agencies regularly undertake ex-post assessments and many more are interested in starting to. To support them in this endeavour, the OECD has published a Reference Guide that provides an introduction to the topic, as well as numerous examples and extensive references to the work done so far in this area.

Reference guide on ex-post evaluation of competition agencies’ enforcement decisions

Guide de référence pour les évaluations ex post des décisions des autorités de la concurrence

Competition policy should be justified by its beneficial effects on the economy and on consumers’ welfare (for example, its effects on growth, innovation, and employment).

The links between competition policy interventions and macro-economic variables are not always well understood. However, there is strong evidence demonstrating that more competitive industries typically have higher rates of productivity growth, and that less competitive sectors are slower to innovate.

The OECD Factsheet on how competition policy affects macro-economic outcomes illustrates the links between competition and macroeconomic outcomes and presents the most recent academic analysis in this area.

Factsheet on how competition policy affects macro-economic outcomes

La politique de la concurrence et ses effets macroéconomiques : une fiche d’information

Ficha informativa sobre los efectos macroeconómicos de la política de competencia

Context

Key steps of assessing the impact of an intervention

Understanding the impact of an intervention can help agencies advocate for the importance of their work, better understand where to devote resources and improve future decision making. Undertaking assessments of impact, for example through ex-ante or ex-post assessment, relies on identifying the effects of the decision compared with the effects that would have arisen if the decision had not occurred. In the context of ex-post assessments, this could involve collecting data to estimate what did occur and what would have occurred in the counterfactual.

The OECD Reference Guide on ex-post evaluation contains an in-depth overview of all these issues and contains examples and references. It can be used both for competition authorities who are planning to start performing ex-post evaluations and for those who already do it but want to improve their assessments. The Impact Assessment Guide similarly provides guidance on conducting ex-ante impact assessments, including explaining some common assumptions that agencies can use to estimate benefits.

Past and future work

Understanding the benefits of competition and the impact of competition authorities’ work has long been an interest of the OECD Competition Committee. The OECD held its first discussion on the topic in 2005 and held several discussions, roundtables and workshops from 2012 to 2016 which helped gather evidence of existing best practices and techniques in this area.

In 2013, the OECD published the results of a survey carried out among 46 competition agencies on whether and how assessed the impact of their activities and what kind of information they provide to the government and the public on this impact.

In 2014, the OECD publishes the Guide for helping competition authorities assess the expected impact of their activities in April and the Factsheet on how competition policy affects macro-economic outcomes in October.

In 2015, a workshop on ex-post evaluation of competition enforcement decisions is held to provide capacity building to competition officials that are involved in ex-post evaluations.

In 2016, a second capacity-building workshop is held in April and the Reference guide on ex-post evaluation of competition agencies' enforcement decisions is released.

Competition authorities recognise the importance of this workstream and have selected it once again as priority workstream for discussions at the OECD Competition Committee in 2025-2026.