Some facts on business dynamism among market leaders

This paper provides new evidence on three key measures of dynamism among market leaders – entrenchment, rank persistence, and market share instability – for 15 European countries between 2000 and 2019. It introduces several methodological innovations to enhance these measures: it adopts an integrated framework that examines multiple measures; it accurately defines the boundaries of the "relevant market” by defining industries at a more disaggregated level, and by considering the geographic scope of competition; and it accounts for linkages between firms within the same business group in the market. The paper shows that, while the overall level of contestability among market leaders remains fairly stable, there are also some signs of declining business dynamism. These findings on dynamism among market leaders offer a valuable complement to more traditional, static measures of competition, such as concentration and markups, thereby enriching the understanding of the competition environment.