Services in the European Union : What Kinds of Regulatory Policies Enhance Productivity?

van der Marel, Erik ; Kren, Janez ; Iootty, Mariana

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: services reform;    regulation;    productivity;    competition policy;    competitiveness;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7919
RP-ID  :  WPS7919

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper is the first one to show theeffects of services regulations on downstream firms in thegoods and services sectors in a multiple-country settingusing firm-level data. The study selected a group ofcountries that are economically relatively services-orientedand show varying degrees of services regulations over time,namely the European Union. The paper employs fouralternative firm-level measures of total factor productivitythat have recently been developed in the economicsliterature and provide robust conclusions. Overall, theresults suggest that regulatory barriers in services havediverse effects on downstream manufacturing performance,depending on the type of regulatory measure in question. Thepolicy variables are split into pure entry barriers andthose that relate to the anti-competitive policies on theoperations of the firm, which the paper calls conductregulations. The latter appear to play the most importantrole in explaining downstream performance across servicesand goods firms. Furthermore, the results show thatregulations matter significantly more in the cases when acountry is institutionally weak, an industry is consideredas relatively close to the technology frontier, or a firm isforeign owned.