OECD Competition Trends 2025

This chapter takes an in focus look at the evolution of competition authority resources. It explores the overall increasing trend for average competition authority budgets and staff and potential reasons that may have led to this trend. This chapter does not look at sufficiency of resources. This means that none of the possible conclusions that can be drawn from it imply that competition authorities have sufficient resources to enforce competition law effectively. The focus was chosen because the increasing trend has been one of the most consistent ones in the CompStats database and links with several broader themes in competition policy.

Recent economic developments such as globalisation, increased use of technology, sector-specific regulations, rising market concentration and climate change, have impacted the way competition authorities work (OECD, 2023[1]). From the resources they use to detect and investigate anti-competitive practices, to the way they advocate for a culture of competition, authorities have been trying to adapt as markets evolve.

In 2023, on average, competition budgets and the number of competition staff increased for jurisdictions covered in the CompStats database, both within OECD and non-OECD jurisdictions. Nominal budgets increased by 10.7% on average, while real budgets increased by 4.7%. This follows a longer-term trend for competition budget increases as shown in Figure ‎1.1.

However, when looking at budgets by jurisdiction, it is possible to see that financial resources available to competition authorities have not increased across the board. In 25 jurisdictions there were real term budget cuts and in 14 of these jurisdictions even the nominal budget decreased.

In 43 of 65 jurisdictions, the number of competition staff increased or remained stable from 2022 to 2023. The biggest increase was observed in non-OECD jurisdictions (with an increase of 4.9%) than in OECD jurisdictions (where staff only increased by 2.6%). In 2023, in total, there were 9 224 people working in competition in those 65 jurisdictions compared to 8 951 in 2022 for the same group. In 2023, the average yearly growth for competition staff was 3.1%.

As shown in Figure ‎1.4, the trend of increasing competition staff is not consistent across all jurisdictions in the database, as 29 authorities have seen staff numbers remain constant or fall. On the one hand, there are some resource-constrained authorities that may face particular challenges to ensure they have sufficient and adequate staff to continue to deliver effective competition enforcement in an often increasingly complex environment. On the other, there are jurisdiction-specific circumstances that may drive this decrease, which may also be temporary.

Looking at interactions between staff and budgets, Figure ‎1.5 shows that in many jurisdictions (33 out of 58), changes in staff were consistent with changes in budget (either positive or negative). However, in the remaining 25 jurisdictions, the changes in both resources were not positively correlated. The overall correlation between the two variables is positive but low (0.33).

In aggregate terms, there are undoubtedly more resources available globally to enforce competition laws. This chapter explores some of the main possible reasons that could explain this dynamic. Stronger pro‑active efforts to investigate and find potential infringements, more powers related to competition enforcement and advocacy, and more complex investigations are possible reasons for this constant increase.

In the recent roundtable on the optimal design, organisation and powers of competition authorities (OECD, 2023[1]) issues such as changes in required skills and resources of modern competition authorities to react and adjust to economic developments and challenges were discussed (see Box ‎1.1). The intensified and more specialised investigative activity may be one of the reasons for the number of staff working in competition matters increasing in some jurisdictions in recent years. The number of staff reported in the CompStats database includes all experts working on competition including whenever competition authorities have established separate specialised data units or have hired data analysts or IT specialists to work within other units.

The need for new expertise is also consistent with the increasing use of more sophisticated tools. For instance, to help in the detection of anti-competitive conduct, competition authorities are using new investigative tools, although their adoption comes with challenges related to requirements for new resources or the adaptation of existing ones (OECD, 2020[2]). Competition authorities are using more complex digital forensics to support the collection and analysis of evidence, requiring methods to collect information from sources such as online cloud services. This intensified due to new working arrangements prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some authorities are also developing empirical methods that use datasets to evaluate firms’ behaviour and identify patterns (the so-called data screening tools). The development and use of these tools likely requires specific IT and data knowledge that traditionally competition authorities did not previously have (see Box ‎1.2 for recent OECD research on the topic). While for now it seems that their use is requiring additional staff, in the future, it would be worth monitoring whether successful digital screening tools may also mean less staff required to detect anti-competitive behaviour.

The second possible reason for the generalised increase in resources available for competition enforcement relates to the growing complexity of the investigations. In the past years, it has become more evident that the growing importance of technology, digitalisation, and globalisation have also increased the complexity in enforcing competition laws. Recent OECD work has reflected on the complex issues that authorities are reviewing. This includes, innovation considerations (OECD, 2023[4]), quality aspects in zero-price markets, new theories of harm, for example in digital markets (OECD, 2023[5]), and environmental and sustainability issues (OECD, 2021[6]).

The higher level of sophistication may make it more difficult for authorities to prove infringements, particularly when authorities are required to prove impact on competition. The use of indirect evidence and economic analysis to prove infringements also generate additional efforts and requires more technical expertise. At the same time, judicial review is also adjusting and must now assess more complex and evolving theories. There have been discussions on whether more intense scrutiny from the judiciary also implies more resources from competition authorities to be able to meet the standard of proof (OECD, 2024[7]).

To alleviate what seems to be an increase on the evidentiary burden of proof, there are active discussions on strategies that jurisdictions could follow and that go from changing the balance towards more per se rules to adopting presumptions or implementing ex ante regulatory approaches (see, for instance, G7 inventory of new rules for digital markets prepared by the OECD (2024[8]). Often, these new rules are then enforced by the competition authorities. Depending on each of their institutional settings, some competition authorities create specific teams for the enforcement of new powers, while others opt for strengthening their existing teams. Other alternatives to tackle the increased complexity in competition enforcement include strengthening the investigative and sanctioning powers to tackle existing anti-competitive conduct and increasing resources and time allocated to each case.

For example, until some years ago, only a handful of jurisdictions had regimes where market studies could result in the imposition of remedies or binding recommendations (such as the United Kingdom, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Mexico and South Africa). However, more jurisdictions have recently introduced them or are having discussions to do so. Examples include Germany and Italy, which introduced them in their regime in 2023,1 and Denmark that did so in 2024.2

All these new powers that competition authorities are recently acquiring may translate into needing more resources, including staffing.

Finally, the growth in budget and staff working on competition may simply be the result of newer agencies building capacity, mostly in non-OECD jurisdictions, or agencies responding to amendments in their competition regimes by building and re-arranging their teams. In some jurisdictions, competition regimes underwent significant amendments in 2022 and 2023 that resulted in a strengthening and re-arranging of the resources required for the authorities and even rearrangements in their institutional design.

In summary, there are several possible reasons which may explain the general trend of increasing resources. The possible reasons include:

• increasing attempts by authorities to pro-actively detect anti-competitive conduct

• the increasing complexity in proving infringements

• competition authorities receiving additional powers/responsibilities

• the strengthening of the authority whenever the regime is new or under consolidation.

Further research would be needed to ascertain whether these are the most relevant drivers of resources and if so, whether the increase in resources will lead to greater future enforcement activity.