Product Market Competition and Economic Performance in Finland

Jens Høj and Michael Wise

No 413, OECD Economics Department Working Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: Following the deep recession in the early 1990s growth has been strong, but the scope for economic catch-up remains considerable and cross-country empirical evidence suggests that enhancing competition is an important means of achieving this. Structural reforms to strengthen competition in the early 1990s did boost growth and were also ahead of similar developments in the EU. However, indicators suggest that relatively weak competition remains in a number of sectors. Moreover, potential competition is reduced by a sparse population and relative long distances to large markets, which together with the prevalence of local monopolies and public ownership in many network industries, point to the need for greater vigilance to sustain and promote competition. Further reforms to promote product market competition should focus on fundamental changes in the regulatory approach as well as more incremental measures to intensify competition. The competition authority should concentrate ...

Concurrence sur le marché des biens et performance économique en Finlande Après la sévère récession des années 1990, la croissance économique a été forte mais la convergence en termes de la productivité est encore loin d’être complète et les comparaisons empiriques internationales suggèrent qu’un renforcement de la concurrence pourrait résorber une part significative de ce retard. Certes, les réformes structurelles mises en œuvre au début des années 1990 pour renforcer la concurrence ont soutenu la croissance et ont même souvent été plus précoces qu’au sein de l’Union Européenne. Néanmoins, divers indicateurs suggèrent que le degré de concurrence reste insuffisant dans de nombreux secteurs. En outre, le degré potentiel de concurrence reste contenu en raison de l’éparpillement de la population et l’éloignement par rapport des longues distances d’accès aux grands marchés, qui, combinés à l’importance des monopoles locaux et de l’actionnariat de l’état dans de nombreuses industries de réseaux, suggèrent la nécessité d’une vigilance renforcée pour ...

Keywords: achat public; competition law; concurrence sur les marchés de biens; droit de la concurrence; Finland; Finlande; industrie de réseau; network industries; product market competition; productivity and growth; productivité et croissance; public ownership; public procurement; regulatory reforms; retail sector; réforme structurelle; secteur public; vente au détail (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K21 L11 L16 L33 L43 L81 L87 L9 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-12-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-eff, nep-law, nep-mic and nep-net
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1787/064577425651 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:413-en

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in OECD Economics Department Working Papers from OECD Publishing Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().