By Cassie Castle, OECD.
The OECD has released the 2023 update of its Energy, Transport & Communication Regulation (ETCR) indicators.
This harmonised annual time series spans from 1975 to 2023 and captures the scope and development of regulatory frameworks in six network sectors: electricity and natural gas; transport by air, road, and rail; and telecommunications by focusing on key dimensions such as barriers to entry; the degree of concentration of market participants; and the degree of public ownership.
The data cover 34 countries, including all OECD members except the most recent additions (Colombia, Costa Rica, Latvia and Lithuania). The ETCR indicators range between 0 and 6, with higher scores reflecting a less competition friendly regulatory framework. For details on how the ETCR indicators are constructed, see the methodology slides here.
Figure 1 presents the ETCR scores over the 50-year period for which data have been collected and shows a marked decline across all six network sectors since the 1980s, reflecting a broad trend toward more competition-friendly regulation across OECD members. The pace of liberalisation was particularly rapid during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Figure 1. ETCR over time, OECD average
To fully capture the effects of regulation in network sectors, the OECD has also published the Regulatory Impact (REGIMPACT) indicators. The REGIMPACT indicators capture how regulation in network sectors indirectly affects downstream industries that rely on them for intermediate inputs. Given that network sectors supplied approximately 20% of the intermediate inputs used by other industries in 2022, understanding both direct and indirect regulatory impacts is crucial for evaluating their broader economic significance.
REGIMPACT indicators are calculated by combining ETCR indicators with measures of sectoral exposure derived from input-output tables. The time-series is available annually from 1975 to 2023 for the 34 OECD countries covered by the ETCR. The REGIMPACT indicators are calculated for 21 downstream sectors, with coverage varying by country and sector based on data availability.
A recent OECD study uses the updated ETCR and REGIMPACT indicators to assess the long-run impact of pro-competition reforms in network sectors on economic performance. The paper, ”Regulation and growth: Lessons from nearly 50 years of product market reforms” (Andrews et al., 2025), finds that the lack of pro-competitive reforms in upstream network sectors, particularly those aimed at removing barriers to entry, significantly hampers growth in downstream industries.
On average across the OECD, liberalising network sectors between 1980 and 2023 is estimated to have raised labour productivity by around 5 percent cumulatively, driven by gains in value added (6 percent), employment (2 percent), and capital stock (4 percent). Notably, the productivity gains in manufacturing, which relies heavily on inputs from regulated upstream sectors, were more than twice as large.
The study further finds that rapid reforms in the late 1990s and early 2000s added approximately 0.25 percentage points annually to labour productivity growth. As reform momentum slowed, their positive effects weakened, possibly contributing to as much as one-sixth of the slowdown in productivity growth since 2005.
Yet, there is still room for improvement. Countries with more regulated network sectors could still raise productivity by up to 1.7% by aligning with the most liberalised peers. The findings underscore the continued value of pro-competitive reforms, especially where regulatory barriers remain high.
To learn more about the OECD’s Product Market Regulation indicators, please visit the PMR webpage.
References
Andrews, D., B. Égert, C. de La Maisonneuve and C. Castle (2025), “Regulation and growth: Lessons from nearly 50 years of product market reforms”, OECD Economics Department Working Paper No. 1835, https://doi.org/10.1787/3b3285df-en.
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