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Overview
On March 26, 2026, the GW Competition Law Center hosted the 5th Annual Forum on Competition Law in Developing Countries – Latin America at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC. Now in its fifth edition, this annual event has become a premier platform for dialogue on the state of competition policy and enforcement across Latin America, bringing together senior enforcers, international organization officials, academics, and practitioners from across the hemisphere.
This year’s Forum was organized by the GW Competition Law Center, in collaboration with CeCo (Centro Competencia) at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Chile), and convened participants from seven Latin American jurisdictions—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru. The event featured a roundtable with heads of competition authorities, the presentation of the 2026 Perception Study on Latin American Competition Authorities, and contributions from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
The Forum was part of a landmark week for the GW Competition Law Center, which also hosted the inaugural Washington Forum on Antitrust and Digital Markets on March 23, 2026. Together, these events underscored the Center’s role as a hub for global competition policy discourse.
Program
- Roundtable with Enforcers: Current Trends in Latin American Competition Policy
Following registration and breakfast (7:20–7:30 am), the Forum opened with a roundtable discussion (7:30–8:20 AM) featuring the heads of three of Latin America’s most prominent competition authorities. The session was moderated by Professor William E. Kovacic, Global Competition Professor of Law and Policy and Director of the Competition Law Center at The George Washington University Law School.
Participating enforcers:
- Gustavo Freitas, Chairman, CADE (Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica), Brazil
- Jorge Grunberg, National Economic Prosecutor (Fiscal Nacional Económico), FNE, Chile
- Andrea Marván, Chair, Federal Economic Competition Commission (COFECE), Mexico
The roundtable explored current enforcement trends and priorities across Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, offering a comparative perspective on the challenges facing competition authorities in the region. Topics addressed included institutional capacity, enforcement priorities, the impact of political transitions on agency independence, and the evolving role of competition policy in economic development.
- 2026 CeCo and GW CLC Perception Study on Latin American Competition Authorities
The centerpiece of the Forum (8:20–9:35 am) was the presentation and discussion of the results of the 2026 Perception Study on Latin American Competition Authorities (“Encuesta de Percepción de la Institucionalidad de Libre Competencia”), a joint research initiative of CeCo and the GW Competition Law Center. Now in its fifth edition, the Study surveyed competition law practitioners across seven jurisdictions—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru—drawing its respondent universe from lawyers listed in Chambers & Partners and Legal 500.
The Study has expanded significantly since its inception. Originally launched by CeCo in 2012 covering only Chile’s FNE, it grew to encompass Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru in 2023, and from 2024 onward has covered all seven jurisdictions. Survey responses are processed by GWU and remitted anonymized to CeCo for analysis. The results were presented through an interactive Microsoft Power BI dashboard, allowing real-time exploration of the data by country and category.
Presenters and discussants:
- Felipe Irarrázabal, Director, CeCo, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Chile)
- Federico Volujewicz (Argentina)
- Mariana Tavares (Brazil)
- Andrea Von Chrismar (Chile)
- Carolina Pardo (Colombia)
- Alberto Brown (Ecuador)
- Omar Guerrero (Mexico)
- Enrique Felices (Peru)
- Alejandro Ibarra, GW Competition Law Center
The presentation covered a comprehensive set of indicators measuring how practitioners perceive their national competition institutions, including:
- Political independence: Assessments of both specialized competition authorities and non-specialized entities (courts, sectoral regulators) across all seven countries, tracking trends from 2024 through 2026.
- Speed and procedural efficiency: Evaluations of the speed of authorities across different phases of competition proceedings, including merger reviews, cartel investigations, abuse of dominance cases, and unilateral conduct enforcement.
- Predictability of decisions: Practitioner perceptions of the consistency and foreseeability of agency actions across institutions in each jurisdiction.
- General deterrence: The degree to which existing competition law institutions generate a credible deterrent effect, with rankings led by Chile and Peru.
- Alignment with international standards: How well national authorities keep up with comparative law developments and international best practices.
- Influence of non-competition interests: The extent to which political, trade, or industrial policy considerations affect decision-making within competition bodies.
- Most influential foreign authority: Practitioner views on which international agency most influences their country’s competition practice, with the European Commission and U.S. FTC/DOJ emerging as leading references across the region.
The session culminated in the presentation of the “Termómetro CeCo,” a composite index ranking the overall institutional strength of competition systems across the seven countries. The 2026 results placed Peru (4.79) and Chile (4.71) at the top, followed by Mexico (4.24), Brazil (4.02), Argentina (3.91), Colombia (3.73), and Ecuador (3.25) for specialized entities. Each country’s discussant provided contextualized analysis of their jurisdiction’s results, offering on-the-ground perspectives on the quantitative findings.
The interactive Power BI dashboard used for the presentation is publicly available on the CeCo website.
- Presentation by the OECD: Competition Trends in Latin America
Paulo Burnier da Silveira, Senior Competition Expert at the OECD, delivered a presentation (9:35–9:45 am) on Competition Trends in Latin America. He began by highlighting the OECD’s recent body of work on the region, including three major 2025 publications: Competition and Intellectual Property in Latin America and the Caribbean, Benefits in Digital Markets in Latin America and the Caribbean, and A Decade of OECD Competition Trends, Data and Insights.
Drawing on the OECD’s Competition Trends database—which covers a decade of data (2015–2024) across 66 jurisdictions (38 OECD and 28 non-OECD members, including 14 from Latin America and the Caribbean), representing approximately 90% of world GDP—Burnier da Silveira presented two principal findings:
Declining enforcement of anticompetitive practices. Across the 66 jurisdictions surveyed, enforcement activity targeting cartels and abuse of dominance declined over the past decade, with abuse of dominance decisions experiencing the steepest decline. However, when focusing specifically on Latin America, the picture was more nuanced: cartel infringement decisions per jurisdiction in the region tracked broadly in line with OECD and worldwide averages, with Latin American authorities maintaining a steady level of cartel enforcement even as global totals declined.
Rising merger enforcement. Merger prohibitions are on the rise globally, and more authorities are intervening. In 2024, 36 transactions were challenged or prohibited by 20 different jurisdictions. Burnier da Silveira highlighted a particularly notable trend for Latin America: the region’s share of total global merger prohibitions has risen significantly, climbing from below 20% in the early years of the decade to above 20% in 2024, reflecting the growing assertiveness of Latin American competition authorities in merger review.
Burnier da Silveira concluded with a forward-looking overview of the OECD’s upcoming engagement with Latin American competition policy. He highlighted two key initiatives for 2026: the OECD-IDB Latin American Competition Forum (LACCF), which will address informal markets and cartel settlements; and the OECD-INDECOPI Regional Center for Competition (RCC), which will focus on private enforcement, competition and consumer protection, abuse of dominance, and judicial review for judges.
- Presentation by the Inter-American Development Bank: Competition, Growth, and Regulatory Reform
Philip Keefer of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) delivered an extensive presentation (9:45 am onward) on the relationship between competition, economic development, and regulatory quality in Latin America and the Caribbean. The presentation was structured around three central messages.
Message 1: Competition fuels economic development.
Keefer began by documenting the region’s economic underperformance, showing that income per capita in Latin America and the Caribbean has grown significantly more slowly than in comparable regions since 1960. Drawing on IDB staff calculations based on Martinez and Santos (2025), he presented evidence that a lack of competition imposes large economic costs across both product and labor markets. In product markets, increased competition is associated with approximately 11% higher GDP per capita and a 6% reduction in inequality (measured by labor share). In labor markets, the effects are even larger: approximately 29% higher GDP per capita and 24% lower inequality (measured by wage dispersion).
Message 2: Market competition is weaker in Latin America and the Caribbean than in advanced economies.
Keefer presented comparative data from Alvarez and Morales (forthcoming) demonstrating that product market power is significantly more pervasive in the region than in advanced economies. Across three key measures—market concentration (measured by the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index), markups, and excess markups—Latin American and Caribbean economies substantially exceed advanced economy benchmarks. The conclusion: the lack of competition means higher prices for consumers across the region.
Message 3: Governments can do more to unlock the benefits of competition.
The final section of Keefer’s presentation focused on the regulatory dimension of competition policy. He framed regulations as instruments that carry both benefits and costs, requiring careful analysis to balance tradeoffs. Drawing on OECD Indicators of Product Market Regulation (2018), he showed that regulations in Latin America and the Caribbean create significantly higher barriers to domestic and foreign entry than in OECD countries, with Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico, and Chile all scoring well above the OECD average. Specific examples of entry barriers included professional requirements, zoning restrictions, and capital requirements for banks.
Keefer presented findings from Ennis and Thanacoody (2025), a meta-analysis of real-world regulatory reforms, which demonstrated that removing or simplifying restrictive regulations leads to increased market entry, stronger competitive pressure, and lower consumer prices. The data showed that while social regulation is associated with a price increase of 8.9%, economic deregulation is associated with a 19% price decrease, and social deregulation with a 17% decrease.
Turning to institutional capacity, Keefer noted that out of 11 Latin American countries surveyed in 2021, only three had conducted regulatory impact assessments (RIAs), five required public consultations before finalizing regulations, and only one had a centralized agency to coordinate and supervise regulatory activity and undertake RIAs. He argued that competition agencies are ideal focal points for regulatory impact assessments, citing three core advantages: capacity (expertise in microeconomic analysis of anti-competitive effects), neutrality (sector regulators have inherent incentives to focus on regulatory benefits rather than costs), and jurisdiction (many anti-competitive regulations, such as zoning, are implemented by local governments and fall outside the purview of sector-specific regulators).
Key Themes and Takeaways
Several recurring themes emerged across the Forum’s sessions:
Institutional independence under pressure. The Perception Study revealed significant variation in how practitioners assess the political independence of competition authorities across the region. While some jurisdictions—notably Chile and Peru—scored relatively well, others showed concerning trends, underscoring the ongoing challenge of insulating competition enforcement from political influence.
Growing regional enforcement capacity. Data from the OECD’s Competition Trends database showed that Latin American competition authorities are becoming increasingly active in merger enforcement, with the region’s share of global merger prohibitions rising from below 20% to above 20% over the past decade. Cartel enforcement in the region has held steady even as global totals have declined. The heads of CADE, FNE, and COFECE each described evolving enforcement priorities and institutional reforms.
The competition–development nexus. The IDB’s contribution provided compelling evidence that robust competition policy is integral to economic development. Lack of competition was shown to impose large costs on both product and labor markets, with increased competition associated with substantially higher GDP per capita and reduced inequality. Market power in Latin America was demonstrated to be significantly more pervasive than in advanced economies.
Regulatory barriers as a competition problem. The IDB presentation highlighted that regulations in Latin America create significantly higher barriers to entry than in OECD countries, and that removing restrictive regulations leads to measurably lower consumer prices. Keefer argued that competition agencies are uniquely positioned to serve as focal points for regulatory impact assessments, given their analytical expertise, institutional neutrality, and cross-jurisdictional reach.
Measuring institutional quality. The CeCo Termómetro and the broader Perception Study provided a rare quantitative framework for evaluating competition institutions across comparable jurisdictions. The longitudinal data—now spanning multiple years—allows tracking of institutional trends and provides a basis for evidence-based reform.
The role of international benchmarks. Contributions from the OECD and IDB demonstrated the importance of international benchmarking in assessing national competition policy frameworks. Practitioners identified the European Commission and U.S. enforcement agencies as the most influential foreign references for Latin American competition practice.