Rating the Competition Agencies: What Constitutes Good Performance?

Posted by D. Daniel Sokol

Bill Kovacic (FTC) asks Rating the Competition Agencies: What Constitutes Good Performance?

ABSTRACT: What is a good competition agency? Among competition policy specialists, this topic often emerges in casual conversation and scholarly debate. For all the attention the subject receives, discussions about agency quality rarely focus carefully on what constitutes good performance. In sport, we use clear, generally accepted scoring rules to determine which side is ahead in an individual contest and to sort out good teams from the bad. The field of competition policy lacks such standards, yet the absence of well-defined, generally accepted scoring rules does not inhibit commentators from providing confident assessments of how well specific competition agencies are doing their jobs.