Findings in an International Perspective

The purpose of this concluding chapter is to summarize and interpret the main findings for Central America and for Mexico of the research conducted for this volume and, more importantly, to relate those findings to the experiences of nascent and relatively newer competition agencies in other parts of the world. In principle, the following discussion may serve a number of useful purposes. First, it may help relate the Central American and Mexican experience to the broader dynamics that are affecting the intensity of competition in developing country markets more generally. For example, some of the important policy measures analysed in prior chapters, such as privatization of state-owned enterprises, have been implemented elsewhere in the developing world, notably in Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and some parts of Africa. A second potential contribution of this approach is to establish just how distinctive the Central American and Mexican experience is. The former are generally characterized as small economies and, given the belief of some experts that competition law and its enforcement should be different in these economies, it will be interesting to see just how distinctive the Central American enforcement experience is.