Market Regulation and Competition Policy – Towards a Dynamic Economy in the Benefit of Consumers Latin American and Caribbean Law and Economics Association (ALACDE) Annual Papers, University of California, Berkeley 2010, 22
Despite the many efforts in the advocacy of competition, we find a great difficulty in determining the appropriate mechanisms to introduce this discipline in the assessment of existing and proposed regulation. Many actors in the public sphere in charge of creating and implementing the regulatory regime ignore the great benefits that competition policy brings to society at large. In addition, when there is a certain level of awareness of such benefits, there is no consensus on the level of importance of analyzing market regulation through the lens of competition policy. This lack of consensus may be motivat ed by the fact that it is not easy to quantify the gains of eliminating the excessive restrictions on competition. Finally, some markets continue to be highly regulated for many different reasons, i.e. political and social goals, which can hinder the task of promoting the efficient allocation of resources.
