| Summary: | Finding an effective way of assessing the performance of a competition authority is an objective that recently has been widely debated by academics and practitioners. Although several methods of evaluation exist, the issue that still remains unsolved is how the assessment could be done systematically. This thesis consists of one descriptive, and four substantive chapters, the substantive chapters (3-6) includes one theoretical and three empirical, all centred on the assessment of competition law and policy enforcement. The first empirical chapter (3) studies the determinants of the reputation of a competition authority (used as a proxy for performance). In the theoretical chapter (4), a model is developed to understand how an age profile of the number of cartels detected by a competition authority can reflect the combined effects of increasing detection efficiency and greater success of deterrence over time. The second empirical chapter (5) builds on the theoretical model and studies the age profile of cartel cases detected across time and between different competition authorities. Finally, the last chapter (6) empirically examines the possible interactions between the different types of competition cases (mergers, cartels, abuse) in the presence of a competition authority which is budget constrained, and therefore must choose how to allocate its resources between these different areas.
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