Do Developing Countries Enforce Their Antitrust Laws? A Statistical Study of Public Antitrust Enforcement in Developing Countries

[Abstract editor: This paper presents a statistical study of public antitrust enforcement in developing countries. It illustrates what really happens with antitrust laws in developing countries after they are put into force. Counter to predictions predominant in the literature, this research shows that developing countries do enforce their antitrust laws with a trend to increase enforcement over time. This disqualifies arguments that developing countries only adopt antitrust laws to signal compliance to donor institutions and to secure trade deals with no real intention to enforce these adopted legislations. It also shows that collecting enforcement data for developing countries is a practicable undertaking. The paper puts together an original dataset that can be complemented and refined by researchers interested in studying actual antitrust enforcement instead of relying on ready-made proxies. In this research 20 antitrust enforcement variables for 50 developing countries over a mean period of 10 years were collected. The data presented here also allows an in-depth look at the activities of antitrust authorities across developing countries. It highlights activities particular to developing countries’ antitrust enforcement, it shows in detail what activities are performed at these public authorities and allows an observation of the varying intensities of enforcement not only across countries but also within the same country. With the help of this dataset the relationship between the enforcement data collected in this research and the ready-made proxies frequently used to measure antitrust enforcement in developing countries is analyzed. The results show that many of these widespread measurements are not associated with the different aspects of the enforcement process.