I have previously written at this site (see here, here, and here) and elsewhere (see here, here, and here) about the problem of anticompetitive market distortions (ACMDs), government-supported (typically crony capitalist) rules that weaken the competitive process, undermine free trade, slow economic growth, and harm consumers.  On May 17, the Heritage Foundation hosted a presentation by Shanker Singham of the Legatum Institute (a London think tank) and me on recent research and projects aimed at combatting ACMDs.

Singham began his remarks by noting that from the late 1940s to the early 1990s, trade negotiations under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (succeeded by the World Trade Organization (WTO)), were highly successful in reducing tariffs and certain non-tariff barriers, and in promoting agreements to deal with trade-related aspects of such areas as government procurement, services, investment, and intellectual property, among others.  Regrettably, however, liberalization of trade restraints at the border was not matched by procompetitive regulatory reform inside borders.  Indeed, to the contrary, ACMDs have continued to proliferate, harming competition, consumers, and economic welfare.  As Singham further explained, the problem is particularly acute in developing countries:  “Because of the failure of early [regulatory] reform in the 1990s which empowered oligarchs and created vested interests in the whole of the developing world, national level reform is extremely difficult.”

To highlight the seriousness of the ACMD problem, Singham and several colleagues have developed a proprietary “Productivity Simulator,” that focuses on potential national economic output based on measures of the effectiveness of domestic competition, international competition, and property rights protections within individual nations.  (The stronger the protections, the greater the potential of the free market to create wealth.)   The Productivity Simulator is able to show, with a regressed accuracy of 90%, the potential gains of reducing distortions in a given country.  Every country has its own curve in the Productivity Simulator – it is a curve because the gains are exponential as one moves to the most difficult reforms.  If all distortions in the world were eliminated (aka, the ceiling of human potential), the Simulator predicts global GDP would rise by 1100% (a conservative estimate, because the Simulator could not be applied to certain very regulatorily-distorted economies for which data were unavailable).   By illustrating the huge “dollars and cents” magnitude of economic losses due to anticompetitive distortions, the Simulator could make the ACMD problem more concrete and thereby help invigorate reform efforts.

Singham also has adapted his Simulator technique to demonstrate the potential for economic growth in proposed “Enterprise Cities” (“e-Cities”), free-market oriented zones within a country that avoid ACMDs and provide strong property rights and rule of law protections.  (Existing city states such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Dubai already possess e-City characteristics.)  Individual e-City laws, regulations, and dispute-resolution mechanisms are negotiated between individual governments and entrepreneurial project teams headed by Singham.  (Already, potential e-cities are under consideration in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Somalia.)  Private investors would be attracted to e-Cities due to their free market regulatory climate and legal protections.  To the extent that e-Cities are launched and thrive, they may serve as “demonstration projects” for the welfare benefits of dismantling ACMDs.

Following Singham’s presentation, I discussed analyses of the ACMD problem carried out in recent years by major international organizations, including the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, an economic think tank funded by developed countries), and the International Competition Network (a network of national competition agencies and experts legal and economic advisers that produces non-binding “best practices” recommendations dealing with competition law and policy).  The OECD’s  “Competition Assessment Toolkit” is a how-to manual for ferreting out ACMDs – it “helps governments to eliminate barriers to competition by providing a method for identifying unnecessary restraints on market activities and developing alternative, less restrictive measures that still achieve government policy objectives.”  The OECD has used the Toolkit to demonstrate the huge economic cost to the Greek economy (5.2 billion euros) of just a very small subset of anticompetitive regulations.  The ICN has drawn on Toolkit principles in developing “Recommended Practices on Competition Assessment” that national competition agencies can apply in opposing ACMDs.  In a related vein, the ICN has also produced a “Competition Culture Project Report” that provides useful survey-based analysis competition agencies could draw upon to generate public support for dismantling ACMDs.  The World Bank has cooperated with ICN advocacy efforts.  It has sponsored annual World Bank forums featuring industry-specific studies of the costs of regulatory restrictions, held in conjunction with ICN annual conferences, and (beginning in 2015).  It also has joined with the ICN in supporting annual “competition advocacy contests” in which national competition agencies are able to highlight economic improvements due to specific regulatory reform successes.  Developed countries also suffer from ACMDs.  For example, occupational licensing restrictions in the United States affect over a quarter of the work force, and, according to a 2015 White House Report, “licensing requirements raise the price of goods and services, restrict employment opportunities, and make it more difficult for workers to take their skills across State lines.”  Moreover, the multibillion dollar cost burden of federal regulations continues to grow rapidly, as documented by the Heritage Foundation’s annual “Red Tape Rising” reports.

I closed my presentation by noting that statutory international trade law reforms operating at the border could complement efforts to reduce regulatory burdens operating inside the border.  In particular, I cited my 2015 Heritage study recommending that United States antidumping law be revised to adopt a procompetitive antitrust-based standard (in contrast to the current approach that serves as an unjustified tax on certain imports).  I also noted the importance of ensuring that trade laws protect against imports that violate intellectual property rights, because such imports undermine competition on the merits.

In sum, the effort to reduce the burdens of ACMDs continue to be pursued and to be highlighted in research, proposed demonstration projects, and efforts to spur regulatory reform.  This is a long-term initiative very much worth pursuing, even though its near-term successes may prove minor at best.