Service regulation and growth: evidence from OECD countries

We study the effects of anti-competitive service regulation by examining whether OECD countries with less anti-competitive regulation see better economic performance in manufacturing industries that use less-regulated services more intensively. Our results indicate that lower service regulation increases value added, productivity and export growth in downstream service-intensive industries. The regulation of professional services and energy provision has particularly strong negative growth effects. Our estimates are robust to accounting for alternative forms of regulation (i.e. product and labour market regulation), alternative measures of financial development and a range of other specification checks.