6.2 Competition
Why is it significant?
Increasing competition is a key element of the Government’s drive to increase productivity. Measuring the competitive intensity of the economy is difficult, but one key driver that can be assessed is the extent to which national competition regimes are effective at providing the type of environment within which efficient firms can flourish.
	How does the UK perform?
	One approach to assessing the UK regime has been to undertake a peer review, where international experts are asked to rank the effectiveness of the UK competition framework with its peers in the OECD. One such study was done by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the DTI. The review placed the UK in the top half of its peer group, behind Germany and the US, but ahead of the rest of the OECD (chart 6.2.1). A more recent study, by the Global Competition Review, placed the UK joint second with Germany, still behind the US (chart 6.2.2.).