Fidèle Ndayisenga
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 0
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First, we provide a characterization of regulatory trends in Canada and the United States using a regulatory indicator recently developed by the OECD with a view to assessing the extent of regulatory convergence in the economic restrictiveness of regulations between Canada and the United States. [...] The regulatory reforms had the further impact of stabilizing the relative burden of the regulations on the economy. [...] Some aggregate measures of regulations that have been historically used include the total number of regulations, the number of pages of regulations, the number of kilobytes taken by the regulations, the labour force engaged in regulatory activity, and the total expenditure (or portion thereof) of regulatory agencies. [...] The available indices for the airlines, railways, roads, telecommunications, post, and gas sectors show that the economic restrictiveness of regulations has either remained constant or has declined (but more of the latter than the former), and that the United States indices are lower than Canada's with the exception of the gas sector where Canada has an advantage and the telecommunications sector [...] In this regard, even though the restrictiveness of the regulatory regime has declined over time, Canada lags both the OECD average country and the United States, and this is the case both in the aggregate and in all the various sectors (figures 4 and 5).