OECD Reviews of Regulatory Reform OECD Reviews of Regulatory Reform: Finland 2003

OECD Reviews of Regulatory Reform OECD Reviews of Regulatory Reform: Finland 2003
Author:
Publisher: Org. for Economic Cooperation & Development
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2003-08-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Finland's reform efforts over the last 20 years have strengthened competition in many parts of the economy and fostered above-average growth. A key feature of reform has been the deregulation of important sectors of the economy, reversing a legacy of state control.However, the challenges posed by high unemployment and a rapidly aging population underline the need to spread reforms across all parts of Finnish society. Finland also needs to improve efficiency in its large public sector.The economy has also changed significantly, to complement the country's traditional strength in industrial goods and natural resources, an information and communications technology sector has flourished. RandD expenditure is now the second highest in the OECD, as a percentage of GDP. To build on those successes, further reforms are needed. The public sector remains large relative to other OECD countries, as do tax burdens. Although significant reforms of the public sector have already taken place, further steps are needed to promote greater efficiency. Finland has worked hard to improve its regulatory governance since the1980s, but stronger political drive for impact assessments of new laws and regulations, as well as supporting structures in the centre of government, would improve the efficiency and coherence of regulatory instruments.There is need for further reform, as Finland's population is aging more rapidly than it is in most OECD countries. The number of people over age 65 is projected to increase by more than 50% by 2020, and the labour force could start to decline within a decade. Rapid aging also underscores the need for labour market reforms. Although unemployment has halved since 1994, at 9% it is still above the EU average. Structural unemployment, especially long-term unemployment, remains a major problem. Centralized wage negotiations offer little incentive for improvement in sheltered sectors of the economy. Moreover, the regulatory regime does little to encourage unemployed individuals to return to work.

Regulation, Productivity and Growth

Regulation, Productivity and Growth
Author: Giuseppe Nicoletti
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 68
Release: 2003
Genre: Antitrust law
ISBN:

In this paper, we relate the scope and depth of regulatory reforms to growth outcomes in OECD countries. By means of a new set of quantitative indicators of regulation, we show that the cross-country variation of regulatory settings has increased in recent years, despite extensive liberalisation and privatisation in the OECD area. We then look at the regulation-growth linkage using data that cover a large set of manufacturing and service industries over the past two decades. We focus on multifactor productivity (MFP), which plays a crucial role in GDP growth and accounts for a significant share of its cross-country variance. We find evidence that reforms promoting private governance and competition (where these are viable) tend to boost productivity. Both privatisation and entry liberalisation are estimated to have a positive impact on productivity. In manufacturing the gains are greater the further a given country is from the technology leader, suggesting that regulation limiting ...

Global Markets and Government Regulation in Telecommunications

Global Markets and Government Regulation in Telecommunications
Author: Kirsten Rodine-Hardy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2013-03-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107311020

In recent years, liberalization, privatization and deregulation have become commonplace in sectors once dominated by government-owned monopolies. In telecommunications, for example, during the 1990s, more than 129 countries established independent regulatory agencies and more than 100 countries privatized the state-owned telecom operator. Why did so many countries liberalize in such a short period of time? For example, why did both Denmark and Burundi, nations different along so many relevant dimensions, liberalize their telecom sectors around the same time? Kirsten L. Rodine-Hardy argues that international organizations – not national governments or market forces – are the primary drivers of policy convergence in the important arena of telecommunications regulation: they create and shape preferences for reform and provide forums for expert discussions and the emergence of policy standards. Yet she also shows that international convergence leaves room for substantial variation among countries, using both econometric analysis and controlled case comparisons of eight European countries.