Institutional design is a critical component of competition law and policy. Good competition laws on the books are meaningless without well-designed institutions to enforce them.

At the same time, many different models exist and working out the optimal institutional design is complex since the menu is vast, many agencies have found success with very different designs, and what works well in one jurisdiction may not always work well in another.

Against this backdrop, many jurisdictions have recently made, or have considered making, changes to their institutional design, which may provide useful insights. For example, a number of jurisdictions have created new “multifunction” agencies by merging the competition agency with the authorities responsible for other economic policy functions, such as consumer protection, sector regulation or public procurement control. Other jurisdictions have made changes designed to enhance the independence of the competition authority from government.

In December 2014 and June 2015, the OECD held two roundtables on "Changes in institutional design of competition authorities" to learn more about existing experiences and to explore the scope for possible OECD future work in this domain.  

Key questions under discussion included:

• What are the issues which triggered recent institutional design changes?
• What are the pros and cons of the various options considered?
• How have the changes worked out so far?

Prof. Allan Fels (Consumers International, Australia) and Prof. William Kovacic (George Washington University, US) lived the debate amongst the many contributing delegations.

» Read the key points from the discussions

» Voir les points clés des discussions

» List of all Competition Policy Roundtables

RELATED MATERIALS AND LINKS

The Interface between Competition and Consumer Policies, 2008 (pdf) 

The Relationship Between Competition Authorities and Sectoral Regulators, 2005

The Objectives of Competition Law and Policy and the Optimal Design of a Competition Agency, 2003

Relationship between Regulators and Competition Authorities, 1998

Competition Home Page

MEETING DOCUMENTS

Key points from the discussions • Les points clés des discussions

Detailed summary of the 2015 discussion • Compte rendu de 2015

Detailed summary of the 2014 discussion • Compte rendu de 2014

INVITED EXPERTS

Allan FELS [Bio]
University of Melbourne, Australia
presenting Institutional Design of Competition Authorities | ppt 

William KOVACIC [Bio]
George Washington University, US
presenting Competition agencies, independence and the political process | ppt 

Nick Malyshev
OECD Regulatory Policy Division presenting Best Practice Principles for the Governance of Regulators

CONTRIBUTIONS FROM PARTICIPANTS